Harnessing cost data to improve early grade reading: cost evidence from a large-scale literacy initiative in Pakistan

ABSTRACT Understanding the resources needed to deliver literacy programmes at scale is critical for improving global education. We estimate the cost of early grade literacy interventions delivered at scale in government schools in Pakistan, including several teacher professional development interventions and a suite of reading materials including tablets, workbooks, readers, and libraries. The entire package cost approximately $1,531 (2019 USD) per school. Over two years of programme delivery, the primary cost driver of this literacy programme was the management, operations, and coordination costs that enabled each component; these amounted to $765 per school, or half of the total cost. Quarterly school support visits (that is, coaching) for teachers were roughly twice the cost of face-to-face trainings and were only slightly higher cost than monthly teacher inquiry groups (that is, learning circles). Using these cost estimates, we present a framework for maximising cost-effectiveness of early grade literacy programmes by using the cost of each component to set thresholds of the relative impact on student literacy that each component should deliver to be worth the cost. These incremental cost estimates of specific interventions were utilised by the government to budget for and take up components of this literacy programme.