UNICEF is predicting an 80% learning poverty rate for Latin America. According to the World Bank's 2024 Guatemala Learning Poverty Brief, "more than half the children cannot read and understand a short age-appropriate text by the end of primary school." Indeed, School the World's Spring 2022 diagnostic testing of thousands of children in rural Guatemala suggested an even more alarming 93-94% learning poverty rate for Latin America's most disadvantaged 5th grade students. As the World Bank states in its brief: "This learning crisis threatens countries' efforts to build human capital and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), undermining sustainable growth and poverty reduction."
We adapted Pratham's TARL model to our local contexts and languages and incorporated playful learning techniques to create our In-School Accelerated Learning Program. We hire and train tutors in the methodology and send tutors to each school in the cohort to provide each student with five hours of small group tutoring per week over six months. Students are then evaluated and divided into small groups according to their learning level. Tutors use play as one of the main methods to strengthen student's literacy and numeracy skills.
Students who participated in this program in 2022, 2023 and 2024 showed statistically significant gains in both reading and math.
For example:
We track the percentage of students progressing from pre-literate to basic reading levels. Our target is 60% proficiency by the end of the program cycle.
-Guatemala: 66% reached basic reading proficiency, exceeding the target.
-Honduras-South: 73% achieved proficiency, surpassing expectations.
-Panama: 69% reached basic reading proficiency, exceeding the goal.
These are just some examples. We have extensive data available for both reading and math for each grade participating in the program.
2024 end-of-year reading assessments were conducted in 3rd and 6th grades to compare outcomes with and without tutoring.
3rd Grade:
Tutoring: 48% reached Story Level 1 and 17% reached Story Level 3.
No tutoring: 9% reached Story Level 3, with most students at intermediate levels.
Since 2022, School the World has built a powerful tutoring program that continues to expand its reach throughout Central America. Beginning in Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama, we started with 2,557 students in our first year. The impressive learning gains achieved after just 6 months of tutoring secured us funding from the Tinker Foundation to continue the program with the first cohort for two additional years.
The results once again helped us secure additional funding to expand the program to more schools. We grew from serving 2,557 students in 2022 to 6,333 in 2023, then 7,893 in 2024, and by the end of 2025, we will have reached 11,532 students. Since the program began, we’ve trained 139 dedicated tutors across participating communities. In 2023, we also introduced a teacher training component and have since trained 880 teachers in this proven methodology.
Looking ahead, we will continue to expand the tutoring to new schools and continue to include teacher training in the methodology. We also hope to partner with and train smaller local organizations to build local capacity to reach more children suffering from learning poverty.
At first, we focused on refining our methodology and assessments to ensure their effectiveness. Then, we expanded the range of skills addressed in reading and math curriculums after realizing many students were performing at lower levels than we expected. This led us to integrate foundational pre-literacy and pre-math skills into our tutoring. We also strengthened our tutor training and the support our staff provides to them, recognizing their crucial role in driving student learning.
We prioritize continuous learning and adaptation through systems that value feedback and community input. WhatsApp groups enable real-time communication with tutors for coaching, monitoring, and sharing their best practices. These exchanges provide qualitative insights from the ground and allow tutors to co-create and enrich a growing manual of effective strategies that continuously improve our intervention.
In addition to expanding tutoring to 26 new communities, to build sustainability, local capacity, and scale our impact, in 2023 we started training teachers in the methodology to emphasize reading skills, diagnostics, and adaptive instruction based on student levels. Ongoing classroom visits from our staff reinforce classroom management and instructional quality.
Identify the total population to be addressed with the program, and a leadership team to undertake its execution as a first step.
Once you have the general information of the target group, contact Bianca Argueta, our Regional Programs Director to evaluate together if our methodology is adequate to your needs and context. See also the Implementation section below.
