Mango Tree Educational Enterprises

Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are introducing mother tongue instruction in the early elementary school grades to improve reading fluency. However, very few countries have developed methods and materials that can effectively transition these children from reading fluently in their native language into reading fluently in the national language (French or English). Previous Hewlett funding helped Mango Tree develop and implement a low-cost method to teach children in Lango; this supplemental grant would fund the development of a method to support the transition from Lango to English—without which, children will be left behind not only in later grades that are taught in English, but also in life.

This grant to Mango Tree Educational Enterprises would support the expansion of a successful low-cost method to teach children to read in their mother tongue and transition them to English to 200 more schools in Northern Uganda. While developing the model in a smaller number of schools, Mango Tree found that students in their classes were one year ahead of their counterparts in other schools: first graders performed as well as or better than comparison learners at the end of second grade. During the expansion, researchers from the University of Michigan will conduct a randomized external evaluation to measure the impact of Mango Tree’s model on student learning outcomes. If successful, this grant would demonstrate how the government can cost-effectively implement its mother-tongue instruction policy, thereby serving as a model to expand this type of intervention across Uganda.