Background: Most funders require non-governmental organisations to evaluate the effectiveness of their programmes. However, in our experience, funders seldom fund evaluation endeavours and organisational staff often lack evaluation skills. Aim: In this outcome evaluation of Living through Learning’s (LTL) class-based English-medium Coronation Reading Adventure Room programme, we addressed two evaluation questions: whether Grade 1 learners who participated in the programme attained LTL’s and the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) literacy standards at the end of the programme and whether teacher attributes contributed to this improvement. Setting: The evaluation was conducted in 18 different no-fee schools in Cape Town. Participants comprised 1090 Grade 1 learners and 54 teachers. Methods: We used Level 2 (programme design and theory) and part of Level 4 (outcome) of an evaluation hierarchy to assess the effectiveness of the programme. Results: Evaluation results showed that most schools, except three, attained the 60% performance standard set by the LTL on all quarterly assessments. Most schools, except two, attained the 50% performance standard of the DBE for English first language on all quarterly assessments. We also found that in terms of teacher attributes, only teacher experience in literacy teaching was significant in predicting learner performance in literacy in the first term of school. Conclusion: We explain why our results should be interpreted with caution and make recommendations for future evaluations in terms of design, data collection and levels of evaluation.

中文翻译：

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衡量开普敦免费学校扫盲计划的成果

背景：大多数资助者要求非政府组织评估其计划的有效性。但是，根据我们的经验，出资者很少进行评估工作，组织人员经常缺乏评估技能。目的：在基于学习生活（LTL）的基于英语的中级加冕阅读冒险室计划的结果评估中，我们解决了两个评估问题：参与该计划的1年级学习者是否获得了LTL和基础教育部（DBE） ）课程末期的扫盲标准，以及教师的素质是否有助于这一进步。地点：评估是在开普敦的18所不同的免费学校中进行的。参加者包括1090名1年级学习者和54名教师。方法：我们使用评估层次结构的2级（程序设计和理论）和4级（结果）的一部分来评估该程序的有效性。结果：评估结果显示，除三所学校外，大多数学校在所有季度评估中均达到了LTL设定的60％绩效标准。除两所学校外，大多数学校在所有季度评估中都达到了DBE 50％的英语第一语言成绩标准。我们还发现，就教师属性而言，只有教师在识字教学中的经验对于预测学期第一学期的学习者在识字方面的表现至关重要。结论：我们解释了为什么应谨慎解释我们的结果，并就设计，数据收集和评估水平等方面的未来评估提出建议。