RTI International Continues Work to Strengthen Education in Indonesia

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. - As part of an effort to improve the quality of teaching and reading in early grades, RTI International will conduct a national Early Grade Reading Assessment and Snapshot of School Management Survey in Indonesia.

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the project, worth $1.8 million, will allow RTI and its project partners to administer assessments to 4,800 grade 2 students across 400 primary schools in the four regions of Indonesia.

"This project provides a great opportunity to extend RTI's strong partnership with USAID and the Government of Indonesia while contributing to the USAID goal of improving the reading skills of 100 million children worldwide by 2015," said Abhijit Nimbalkar, the project’s manager.  “These assessments will help produce a meaningful, measureable impact for students in primary grades.”

Building upon RTI’s 2012 early grade reading assessment conducted under the USAID Prioritizing Reform, Innovation and Opportunities for Reaching Indonesia’s Teachers, Administrators and Students (PRIORITAS) project, this national survey will be directed toward improving the quality of teaching and learning in the early grades, specifically teachers’ skills in addressing students’ reading performance.

The assessments will allow RTI, USAID, the Indonesia Ministry of Education and Culture, and the Indonesia Ministry of Religious Affairs to quickly evaluate primary school students’ familiarity with foundational reading, literacy, and fluency skills. This basic information will then feed into a research evaluation of teaching and management practices that are most closely linked to student performance.

”The information gained from this project will help identify areas for potential improvement in teaching, management, and curricular practice benefitting Indonesian schoolchildren in the early grades ,” Nimbalkar said.