Devi Sansthan NGO & Global Dream - Non Profit initiative, Non Profit Literacy Campaign, Literacy Campaign, Global Dreamshaala Literacy Campaign, Saaksharta Abhiyan ,DEVI Sansthan and SBI Foundation to implement Global Dreamshaala

Data & Evidence

Theories are all very well, but do we have the data to back it up? This section considers the evidence for the efficacy of the global dream program.

A small team of volunteers have been experimenting teaching one-on-one with the Global Dream materials in Nai Basti, one of Lucknow’s largest slums, since 2015. Their database of around 200 learners shows that:

It typically takes 60 lessons, which translates to approximately 20 instructional hours, over 3 months, to complete the global dream program.
Both children and adults learn at similar rates, and boys and girls also progress similarly.

In a school context, the Global Dream materials were trialled 5 government schools in Hamidpur district UP. The model was that teachers would spend some time going through each lesson with the whole class, and then students would do paired peer learning.

We used a 4-point scale for literacy (0 = totally illiterate, 1 = recognises letters, 2 = joins letters together to form words without matras, 3 = simple words with matras, 4 = standard 3 text with matras and multi-syllable words). The average pretest score for Grade 1 students was 0.1 and for Grade 5 students was 1.9. This suggests an extremely low background rate of progress – just 0.45 reading scale points in an academic year.

In contrast, this 3 month pilot project achieved an average improvement of 1.1 reading scale points. That is, the rate of progress was around 10 times greater than what it was without the Global Dream materials. This was with very few and low-cost resources, just a several hour training for the teachers involved, and no monitoring or supervision for the teachers involved. With more resources and supervision, even better results might be attained.