Basa Pilipinas is USAID/Philippines’ flagship basic education project in support of the Philippine Government’s early grade reading program. Implemented in close collaboration with the Department of Education, Basa Pilipinas supports the implementation of the language and literacy component of the K to 12 curriculum for Grades 1 to 3. The project’s approach to teacher professional development and systemic change is designed to promote transformational practices at the school, division, and national level focusing on classroom change in materials development and accessibility, guided reading, writing, and grouping for differentiated learning.

ACTIVITIES
Basa Pilipinas works with the Department of Education in targeted language regions to develop and implement effective literacy instruction practices to transform reading and learning outcomes in classrooms.

The project also strengthens Department of Education’s Learning Action Cells to provide teachers with support from school heads as they adopt new instructional strategies through Basa’s materials. The project coordinates with private sector partners to increase advocacy for early grade reading. Basa Pilipinas provides teaching and learning materials and secures formal partnership commitments from Brothers Brother Foundation, Petron Foundation and National Bookstore Foundation in the acquisition and distribution of reading materials to project sites.

RESULTS
To date, Basa Pilipinas has trained 12,854 Grades 1 to 3 teachers on effective reading instruction and 3,465 Department of Education supervisors and school heads on Learning Action Cells facilitation and teacher training support for reading. USAID Basa has also distributed over four million teaching and learning materials, including teacher’s guides, read alouds, and leveled readers, and supplementary English books and reading materials for use in USAID-assisted schools. Evaluation results in 2015 showed that USAID’s intervention, through Basa, helped increased the fluency of students by an additional nine words per minute and reading comprehension gains by 23 percent.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

• Improve reading instruction
• Improve reading delivery systems
• Improve access to quality reading materials

TARGET AREAS

• La Union
• Ilocos Norte
• Ilocos Sur
• Cebu
• Bohol