Using information and communication technologies to support EGRA

Abstract

As the previous chapters of this book have shown, several factors drive the development and adoption of the early grade reading assessment (EGRA) worldwide. For example, policy makers and educators can use it as a formal, system-level diagnostic tool or as a less formal local monitoring tool. Moreover, it is accessible to national governments and to local authorities who wish to do rapid but accurate assessments of the level of reading and to repeat these often enough to analyze changes over time.

Across the different applications of EGRA, to implement the assessment in a reliable, consistent, and comparative way requires an investment of resources— both human and material. In addition to the actual data collection costs, the costs include time to train, administer, supervise, and perform high-quality data entry and analysis and then to summarize the results in a useful way for each assessment.