Foreign Agricultural Service
United States Department of Agriculture
FY 19 McGovern-Dole 
International Food for Education 
and Child Nutrition Project - The 
Future is Ours!
Brakna and Gorgol Regions, 
Mauritania 
BASELINE ASSESSMENT REPORT
December 2020
This publication was produced at the request of the United States Department of Agriculture. It was 
prepared independently by IMC Worldwide for Counterpart International.
The Future is Ours! Baseline Performance Evaluation Report
The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition project in Mauritania, named 
The Future is Ours!, seeks to improve literacy for school-aged children Mauritania’s Brakna and Gorgol 
regions. The project is funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and implemented 
by Counterpart International (Counterpart) with support from local partners Economie et 
Devéloppement (EcoDev), Organisation Non Gouvernementale (ONG) Actions, and regional partner 
Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED).
Acknowledgements
IMC would like to thank USDA and Counterpart International and The Future is Ours! project staff for
the insight they provided into Mauritania and its educational system. Their guidance and reviews of
report drafts were crucial contributions to this final baseline assessment report. IMC also thanks the
Mauritanian Ministry of Education at central and regional levels and the project’s beneficiaries for
facilitating the field work.
Publication Information
This report was prepared by IMC Worldwide under contract to Counterpart International as part of its
work with the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition known as The
Future is Ours!
Agreement Number: FFE-682-2019/003-00-A 
Project Duration: 2019-2024 
Implemented by: Counterpart International
Evaluation Authored by: 
Jason Wares, Team Leader
Christopher Root, Co-Evaluator
Andrew Trembley, EGRA Specialist 
Rachel Hoffman, Project Manager 
Cover Photo Source: Counterpart International 
DISCLAIMER: This publication was produced at the request of the United States Department of Agriculture. It 
was prepared by an independent third-party evaluation firm. The author’s views expressed in this publication 
do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Department of Agriculture or the United States 
Government.
Accessibility Note: An accessible version of this document can be made available by contacting 
fas.monitoring.evaluation@usda.gov 
Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY......................................................................................................................................................... 1
1. INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................................................... 6
PROJECT DESCRIPTION ..................................................................................................................................................... 6
BASELINE ASSESSMENT REPORT BACKGROUND SCOPE..........................................................................................................15
2. ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY...................................................................................................................................16
DATA SOURCES AND DATA COLLECTION METHODS..............................................................................................................16
Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA).............................................................................................................16
Other Surveys and Qualitative Data Collection....................................................................................................19
Changes to The Assessment Implementation Due to COVID-19 ..........................................................................20
SAMPLING STRATEGY .....................................................................................................................................................20
Assessment Design Overview...............................................................................................................................20
EGRA Sample Size and Selection ..........................................................................................................................21
Other Survey Sample Size and Selection ..............................................................................................................23
DATA COLLECTION TRAINING...........................................................................................................................................23
Tool Refinement, Piloting and Debrief .................................................................................................................24
Data Analysis .......................................................................................................................................................24
Data Quality Control and Assurance....................................................................................................................24
LIMITATIONS ................................................................................................................................................................25
3. RESULTS ....................................................................................................................................................................25
KEY INDICATORS............................................................................................................................................................26
MGD SO1: Improved Literacy of School Aged Children ........................................................................................26
MGD 1.1 Improved Quality of Literacy Instruction ..............................................................................................28
MGD 1.2: Improved Attentiveness.......................................................................................................................29
MGD 1.3: Improved Student Attendance ............................................................................................................29
MGD 1.3.4: Improved Student Enrollment...........................................................................................................31
MGD SO2: Increased Use of Health, Nutrition and Dietary Practices..................................................................32
MGD 2.4: Increased Access to Clean Water and Sanitation Services...................................................................33
RESEARCH QUESTIONS ...................................................................................................................................................34
Project Level Performance ...................................................................................................................................34
School feeding and nutrition................................................................................................................................34
Education and Literacy Research .........................................................................................................................35
Health and Maternal & Child Health (MCH) ........................................................................................................35
Methodological Research Questions....................................................................................................................37
School Feeding Sustainability...............................................................................................................................39
4. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................................................................41
RECOMMENDATIONS .....................................................................................................................................................41
Promoting School Feeding Sustainability.............................................................................................................41
Measuring Project Performance ..........................................................................................................................42
Improved Literacy of School Aged Children..........................................................................................................43
Improved Quality of literacy instruction ..............................................................................................................44
Improved Attentiveness.......................................................................................................................................44
Improved Student Attendance and Enrollment....................................................................................................45
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................................................45
ANNEX 1: KEY INDICATORS AND BASELINE VALUES...........................................................................................................46
ANNEX 2: EGRA VALIDITY ..................................................................................................................................................49
ANNEX 3: EGRA EXPLANATION AND RESULTS....................................................................................................................50
ANNEX 4: BASELINE ASSESSMENT SCOPE OF WORK .........................................................................................................57
ANNEX 5: DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS ....................................................................................................................69
ANNEX 6: RESULTS FRAMEWORK .....................................................................................................................................81
Tables
Table 1 Quantitative Survey Sample Sizes……………………………………………………………………………………………..4 
Table 2 EGRA Index Calculation................................................................................................................ 19
Table 3 EGRA sample composition ........................................................................................................... 22
Table 4 Quantitative Survey Sample Sizes................................................................................................ 23
Table 5 Percentage of students that can read 20 letters per minute in Arabic and in French .............. 266
Table 6 Reading proficiency; pilot vs non-pilot ........................................................................................ 27
Table 7 Proficiency by gender................................................................................................................... 27
Table 8 Percentage of teachers that had received training in the previous two years ........................... 28
Table 9 Quality of Teacher Training.......................................................................................................... 29
Table 10 Student attentiveness................................................................................................................ 29
Table 11 Most common reasons students miss school............................................................................ 30
Table 12 Percentage of students who wash their hands.......................................................................... 32
Table 13 Status of school latrines............................................................................................................. 33
Table 14 School sources of water............................................................................................................. 34
Table 15 Participation in extra-curricular activities………………………………………………………………………………35 
Table 16 Percentage of schools that distribute deworming medication…………………………………………..….36
Table 17 Attendance at schools with and without good latrines………………………………………………………….37 
Table 18 Attendance at schools with a working water source……………………………………………………………..37
Table 19 Percentages of boys and girls that miss school because of latrine or water quality……………….37
Table 20 Alpha ranges………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….49
Table 21 Alpha statistics for the baseline dataset…………………………………………………………………….............49
Table 22 EGRA scores by task – French……………………………………………………………………..…………………………50
Table 23 EGRA scores by task – Arabic…………………………………………………………………………………………………51
Figures
Figure 1 Student attendance by grade ..................................................................................................... 30
Figure 2 Enrollment by Grade................................................................................................................... 32
Acronyms and Abbreviations
ARED Associates in Research and Education for Development
Counterpart
COVID
Counterpart International
Coronavirus disease
CSB+ Corn-Soy Blend Plus
DNES Direction de la Nutrition et de l’Education Sanitaire/ Department of 
Nutrition and Health Education
DREN Direction Régionale de l’Education Nationale/ Regional Directorate of 
National Education
Ecodev Economie et Développement
EGR Early Grade Reading
EGRA Early Grade Reading Assessment
G grams
GCNF Global Child Nutrition Forum 
GoM Government of Mauritania 
HQ Headquarters
IDEN National Education Inspection Department 
IMC IMC Worldwide, Inc.
McGovern-Dole McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition
MCH Maternal and Child Health
MCN Maternal and Child Nutrition 
MEL Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
MOE Ministry of National Education, Training and Reform
MOH Ministry of Health 
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
ONG Organisation Non Gouvernementale
ONSER Office National des Services d’Eau en Milieu Rural/National Office for 
Water Services in Rural Areas
PASEC Programme d’analyse des systems éducatifs de la confem
PTA Parent Teacher Association
PY Project Year
SCC School Canteen Committees
SMC School Management Committees
SO Strategic Objective
SSME Snapshot of School Management and Effectiveness
TOT Trainer of Trainer 
TWG Technical Working Group 
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund
US United States
USD United States Dollar
USDA
WASH
WFP 
United States Department of Agriculture
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
World Food Program
1 
Executive Summary
The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition (McGovern-Dole) project, The 
Future is Ours!, seeks to improve literacy for school-aged children in Mauritania’s Brakna and Gorgol 
regions. The project is funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and 
implemented by Counterpart International (Counterpart) with support from local partners Economie et 
Développement (EcoDev), Organisation Non Gouvernementale (ONG) Actions, and regional partner 
Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED). The project agreement with USDA was 
signed on September 23, 2019 and is scheduled to run through September 30, 2024. The project’s total 
budget is $22.5 million USD.
The Future is Ours! is focused on achieving the following objectives: 
• Improve student attendance rates by providing nutritious daily school meals; 
• Improve health and dietary practices by providing access to deworming medications; 
• Increase knowledge of nutrition, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), and safe food 
preparation and storage practices;
• Improve school infrastructure and increase access to clean water and sanitation by building 
storerooms, latrines, and water station systems;
• Improve the literacy of school age children through the implementation of a multi-layered
pilot program; and
• Increase capacity of national stakeholders to improve the quality of the primary school
system, and to lead and maintain school feeding programs.
The project aims to serve over 140,000 direct beneficiaries, specifically: 
• 127,100 students in 209 selected schools who will benefit from school meals provision. School 
meals will consist of a nutritious breakfast five days a week and mid-day school meal four days 
a week. Some students in the 51 pilot schools will also participate in literacy-focused activities, 
such as reading clubs. 
• 192 teachers in the 51-literacy pilot selected schools who will take part in the literacy-focused 
activities, such as training and coaching sessions.
• 209 school administrators in the 209 selected schools, some of which will also participate in 
literacy-focused activities, such as training on Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA). 
• 10,265 Parent Teacher Association (PTA) participants, School Management Committees (SMC)
members, pregnant and lactating mothers, and cooks who will participate in training in food 
preparation, storage practices, good health and nutrition practices, community mobilization for 
school canteens, and management of those canteens.
• 3,247 children under five-years-old through Take-Home Rations (THR) provided to mothers 
participating in Maternal and Child Nutrition (MCN) activities. 
• 10 government officials who will participate in training and capacity building activities. 
Among the project’s innovations is a primary school literacy activity that uses best practices in EGRA. 
The pilot will be implemented in grades 1 – 3 in 51 of the project’s schools and will test a holistic 
approach to improve student learning outcomes. 
2
Baseline Purpose and Methodology
This baseline assessment report presents values for the project’s key indicators, answers to research 
questions included in the baseline scope of work, guidance for future evaluations, and 
recommendations for project implementation. The values for key indicators are presented in Annex 1. 
The research questions comprised 12 questions that the baseline evaluation sought to operationalize 
so that future evaluations will measure them consistently and accurately. These questions were the 
following:
•Have program outputs and outcome targets been 
achieved? 
•What is the effect of school feeding on attendance, 
enrollment, and attention? 
•What is the interaction between school feeding and 
improved hygiene practices?
•How effective are reading-oriented extra-curricular 
activities in improving literacy? 
•How effective are teacher trainings? 
•What is the effect of deworming medicine on 
student attendance? 
•What is the effect of latrine and water access on 
student attendance, especially for girls? 
•Is there behavioral change in handwashing for 
students?
•What is the best way to measure the three 
undefined McGovern-Dole outcome indicators (MGD 
1.1, 1.2 and 1.3.2)? 
•How reliable is school and government-collected 
attendance and enrollment data? How can the 
accuracy be improved? 
• What is the government capacity to manage school 
feeding at regional and national levels? 
• What commitment has the government shown regarding school feeding? (e.g., clearly defined 
roles for managing school feeding, plans to expand school feeding budget)?
The baseline assessment followed a mixed methods approach for data collection and analysis that 
included secondary sources1, qualitative data collection, and quantitative data collection through 
1 The evaluation used secondary sources to inform the background section of this report and to design the French and 
Arabic EGRA tools. 
Source: Counterpart International
3
stakeholder questionnaires. Specifically, the assessment collected data through the following types of
surveys and interviews: 
1. Student survey for grades 1-6 focused on collecting information about student absences and
WASH practices. 
2. Teacher survey focused on teacher absenteeism, student attentiveness, teaching materials, and 
teacher trainings received prior to The Future is Ours! 
3. School director survey/school observation checklist included questions on attendance, 
enrollment, and water and sanitary facilities. 
4. Qualitative interviews with parents focused on student WASH practices, food consumption, and 
school absences. 
5. Qualitative interviews with government officials, as well as regional and departmental 
inspectors, focused on challenges to improving literacy and recommendations for The Future is 
Ours! 
The assessment also included a measurement of primary school student literacy using the EGRA 
methodology. The IMC Worldwide, Inc. (IMC) assessment team created two EGRA tools: one in French 
and another in Arabic. Those tools assessed student performance in literacy activities (known as sub￾tasks), beginning with the most basic literacy skills and progressing to the most difficult skills. The 
range of skills that the EGRA assessed, from easiest to most complex, are:
1. Phoneme Recognition 2. Character Recognition 
3. Word Recognition 4. Reading Passage
5. Reading Comprehension 6. Writing 
The baseline assessment used a quasi-experimental design that allows for a strong comparison 
between literacy instruction plus school feeding (pilot) schools and just school feeding schools (non￾pilot schools). The assessment used a two-stage cluster design. In total, 146 of 209 McGovern-Dole 
schools (95 randomly selected non-literacy pilot schools, 51 literacy pilot schools) were included in this 
assessment. 
A summary of the sample size by group is shown in Table 1 below.
4
Table 1: Quantitative Survey Sample Sizes
Interviews 
per school
McGovern-Dole
Pilot 
Expected/Actual
McGovern-Dole
non-Pilot 
Expected/Actual
Total Expected/Actual
Schools 51 51 95 95 146 146
EGRA 3.84 204 181 380 381 584 562
Non-EGRA Student 6 306 301 570 554 876 855
Teacher ~ 2.5 127 128 237 211 365 339
Director/checklist 1 51 51 95 95 146 146
Total 2,117 2,048
Limitations
The baseline evaluation had the following limitations:
Coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 restrictions: The COVID-19 pandemic may have created bias in the 
assessment results. Respondents may have been less willing to participate in interviews, or eager to 
cut interviews short because they were fearful of virus transmission. Students may have been less 
likely to attend school. COVID-19 also limited the degree to which the assessment team could conduct 
trainings in person and participate in face-to-face interviews in Mauritania. 
Dependence on school records for enrollment and attendance rates: Several baseline values, such as 
school attendance and enrollment rates, rely on school records. Measurement of changes in student 
attendance and enrollment rely on the discipline with which schools maintain these records 
consistently. Enumerators examined school records at each school that they visited. Every school 
visited had classes for students in grades 1 through 6. Data collectors did not collect information on 
differences in enrollment between male and female students, so discrepancies in enrollment and 
attendance rates for male and female students are not included in the report. That data will be 
collected by the project staff and reported on.
Dependence on enrollment and attendance records for literacy assessment: Students were randomly 
selected from enrollment and attendance lists to participate in the EGRA. School directors indicated in 
interviews that occasionally students who did not have official birth certificates may not have 
appeared in school records. Students who did not appear on enrollment or attendance lists would 
have been excluded from the possibility of taking the EGRA. 
Reliance on teachers’ availability: The assessment team could not take a random sample of working 
teachers. The assessment relies on interviewing teachers who were available on the day of the 
assessment, which may create bias in teacher responses. 
Reliance on perceptions and memory: Many of the baseline assessment’s measurements rely on 
respondent’s perception of behaviors, such as frequency of handwashing. Others asked respondents to 
remember reasons for behaviors, such as missing school or missing taking attendance. While these 
perceptions provide valuable information, they are not as accurate as other measurements that 
observe behaviors. 
Lack of information about literacy standards: The assessment team could not find information on 
Mauritanian standards for primary school literacy, as described in the report. Mauritania lacks 
5
information about literacy standards because the Ministry of National Education, Training and Reform
(MOE) has never used literacy evaluation tools. When asked by the baseline evaluation team about 
EGRA, the general inspector of education, the director of Department of Nutrition and Health 
Education (DNES), and the director of basic education department mentioned that they had never used 
the tool, therefore, they could not provide the threshold for literacy standards. Fortunately, an 
education reform is ongoing in Mauritania and the current Minister of Education has already agreed to 
implement EGRA in all government schools in the country. Therefore, the standards for primary school 
literacy will be later identified. The assessment team recommends a measure of proficiency in the 
report that may not reflect the Future is Ours! project goals or the policy of the Mauritanian 
Government. 
Key Findings and Recommendations
The assessment provides the following among its findings and recommendations.
Sustainability: The Future is Ours! is in a strong position to work with the Government of Mauritania 
(GoM) to invest in school feeding sustainability. Among the project’s assets are the GoM’s
commitment to promoting school feeding. The GoM’s School Feeding Department reported that it 
would benefit from assistance with managing funding, and monitoring and assessment of school 
feeding projects. 
The baseline assessment recommends three ways that the project could work with the GoM to 
increase the likelihood that school feeding projects will continue after The Future is Ours! ends. First, 
the project could assist the Department of School Feeding in working with other government 
departments and agencies to maximize the efficiency of government resources. Second, building the 
GoM’s monitoring and assessment capacities offers an opportunity to connect central government 
initiatives with local government officials to improve information flow and local ownership of school 
feeding initiatives. Last, the project could work with the GoM to promote initiatives that would tie the 
central government, local government, and communities together. For example, the project could 
work with the government and communities to create a school feeding challenge that incentivizes local 
government officials and school communities to stretch school feeding budgets while maximizing 
nutritional value of school meals. 
Student Literacy: The Future is Ours! aims to increase the percentage of students who, by the end of 
two grades of primary schooling, demonstrate that they can read and understand the meaning of 
grade level text. The baseline assessment found that only 7 percent of students could meet the 
standard in Arabic, and only 2 percent of students could meet it in French. Consequently, the baseline 
study recommends adding an indicator that measures the percentage of students who, by the end of 
two grades of primary schooling, can read 20 letters per minute. Defining success as the percentage of 
students who can read 20 correct letters per minute puts the project’s focus on the skills that will most 
likely improve during the project’s implementation. 
The full report provides narrative and context around these findings. It also presents detailed findings 
around other key indicators and intermediate results for The Future is Ours! project team to consider 
when designing the project’s initiatives. 
6
1. Introduction
Project Description
The McGovern-Dole project The Future is Ours! seeks to 
improve literacy for school-aged children Mauritania’s 
Brakna and Gorgol regions.
The new project is funded by USDA and implemented by 
Counterpart, with support from local partners EcoDev, ONG
Actions, and regional partner ARED. The project cooperative 
agreement with USDA was signed on September 23, 2019 
and is scheduled to run through September 30, 2024. The 
project’s total budget is $22.5 million.
The Future is Ours! aims to serve over 140,000 direct 
beneficiaries, specifically: 
• 127,100 students in 209 selected schools who will 
take part in school meals provision. School meals will
consist of a nutritious breakfast five days a week and mid-day school meal four days a week.
Some students in the 51 pilot schools will also participate in literacy-focused activities, such as 
reading clubs. 
• 192 teachers in the 51-literacy pilot selected schools who will take part in the literacy-focused 
activities, such as training and coaching sessions.
• 209 school administrators in the 209 selected schools, some of whom will also participate in 
literacy-focused activities such as training on EGRA.
• 10,265 PTA participants, SMC members, pregnant and lactating mothers, and cooks who will 
participate in training in food preparation, storage practices, good health and nutrition 
practices, community mobilization for school canteens, and management of those canteens.
• 3,247 children under five-years-old through THR provided to mothers participating in MCN
activities. 
• 10 government officials who will participate in training and capacity building activities. 
Evaluation COVID-19 Related Issues
Although schools in Mauritania were closed from mid-March to August 31, 2020 due to COVID-19, 
they were open during the baseline evaluation. Schools re-closed from mid-December to mid￾January, and they have been open since then. In addition to the pandemic, there are other factors 
that might disrupt the project implementation such as a teacher strike and serious drought 
conditions that can negatively impact crop yield and household income, which might prevent 
parents from sending their children to school. Counterpart will monitor these factors and if they 
present a serious risk, Counterpart will produce monitoring evidence to USDA for decision-making.
Local School Language in Mauritania
7
Mauritania has a bilingual school system with Arabic and French. Most people speak Hassania, 
followed by Peul, Wolof, and Soninké, in Mauritanian homes, while French is rarely spoken. Almost all 
young children spend time in a Quranic school for religious purposes where they learn the Arabic 
alphabet and memorize the Quran.
Arabic is the language of instruction in Grade 1, and French is introduced as a second language in 
Grade 2. Nearly all Mauritanian students attend madrasahs from pre-school age and arrive at primary 
school with some foundational knowledge of the Arabic language. However, for most students, 
Hassania, Wolof, Peul, or another mother tongue language is their first language. The same scenario is 
true for teachers who are expected to teach in a language that is not their mother tongue. Moreover, 
both students and teachers have limited exposure to French. 
In 1999, the GoM started education system reforms that included standardizing the language of 
instruction. Before 1999, whether students were taught in Arabic or French depended on the location 
and priorities of each school. Since the 1999 reforms, schools all teach in Arabic, Mauritania’s official 
language, beginning in first grade. Instruction in French begins in students’ second year2. The 
languages spoken in Brakna and Gorgol, where the project is being implemented, are Hassania, Fulani, 
and Soninke.
School Feeding Programs in Mauritania
School feeding began in Mauritania in 1963 to support the enrollment of scholarship students in 
secondary schools. In 1970, the program expanded to include primary school students. In the second 
half of the 1980s, specifically in 1986, the program refocused exclusively on primary education and a 
few mahadras in rural areas most vulnerable to food insecurity. 
At the end of 1980, the global resource crunch prompted many countries to review the targets of 
school feeding programs. For Mauritania, as for several other countries, this revision resulted in the 
orientation of assistance towards poor rural areas vulnerable to food insecurity and with low education 
and nutrition indicators.
In the early 2000s, the deepening of the global financial and energy crisis in donor countries, resulting 
in rising food prices and a food crisis in developing countries (2008), revealed the importance of school 
feeding as a social safety net when millions of children found themselves out of school and 
undernourished.
World Food Program (WFP) has developed strategies for the sustainability of school canteens with the 
support of some countries, including Brazil, so that “no child goes to school hungry.”3 In this 
perspective, the GoM committed to progressively take charge of school feeding in the country. 
However, the deterioration of the economic situation, caused by recurrent droughts combined with 
other shocks, has not allowed the GoM to meet the challenge of taking charge of school feeding and, 
from 2011 to 2016, WFP, despite the reduction of its resources, has once again become the only 
2 Moya, Solanash "The Current State of Education in Mauritania." Borgen Magazine, 17 June 2017 3 Page 7 of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania’s National School Feeding Policy, 2016
8
organization that supports school feeding in Mauritania. Many school children from poor rural families 
have been deprived of the multiple benefits of school meals.
The GoM's school canteen program, supported by WFP, is facing funding shortfalls that expose 
thousands of beneficiary children to the risk of undernutrition and school dropout. To reverse the 
situation, in 2016, the GoM developed a school feeding program which aims to guarantee a sustainable 
school diet based on nutritious local products for all children enrolled in basic education schools by 
2030.
The goal of the national school feeding strategy is “by 2030 to have a sustainable school feeding 
program using local enriched food products for all students in preschool, primary school, rural middle 
schools, and religious schools (mahadras).”4 The GoM launched its national school feeding program in 
2021 with a budget of $700,000 USD per year. The funding is used for procurement of kitchen utensils 
and local commodities (rice, beans, lentils, oil, and dry milk), transportation of commodities to the 
various schools, monitoring of results, and various trainings. The school feeding consists of breakfast 
and lunch without THR. Beneficiaries include students from primary schools and high schools in the 
following regions Adrar, Assaba, Dakhlet Nouadhibou, Gorgol, Guidimakha, Hodh Ech Chargui, Hodh El 
Gharbi, Inchiri, Tagant, Tiris Zemmour, and Trarza. The program is implemented by the GoM through 
Taazour, Commissariat à la Securité Alimentaire, and the School Feeding Department. 
Currently, WFP is the sole school feeding partner to the GoM, distributing daily snacks and lunches to 
50,000 primary school children in the regions of Assaba, Guidimakha, and Hodh El Chargui. Additional 
services delivered to the schools including communication on nutrition, hygiene, and family practices, 
are funded by German cooperation.
For Counterpart’s The Future is Ours!, school meals consist of a nutritious breakfast five days a week 
and midday school meal four days a week. Each student receives a daily breakfast ration of 100 grams 
(g) of corn-soy blend plus (CSB+) and 20 g oil. Students each also receive a lunch ration (Monday–
Thursday) of 100 g fortified rice and 20 g peas or lentils and 20 g of oil. Peas and lentils are rotated to 
make the lunches tastier and more enticing to the children. In Year 5, only a lunch ration will be 
provided.
The Future is Ours! Theory of Change
The Future is Ours! theory of change is that improving student literacy and increasing use of health, 
nutrition, and dietary practices require a community focus on achieving those outcomes and building 
supportive structures to sustain the project’s activities beyond its implementation timeline. The 
project’s core activities directly integrate student literacy and nutrition outcomes. These activities are 
reinforced by other activities that link national decision makers to local school stakeholders and 
engage regional health and education actors to work together. The project’s work through schools, 
4 Page 5 of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania’s National School Feeding Policy, 2016.
9
communities, and government changes behaviors and increases the possibility that the project’s 
efforts will be sustained beyond its implementation period. 
The project’s theory of change is supported by the causal links in its results framework, which is 
included in this report as Annex 6. The results framework is defined by two Strategic Objectives (SO): 1) 
improved literacy of school-aged children and 2) increased use of health, nutrition, and dietary 
practices. The two SO share policy results: increased capacity of government institutions, improved 
policy and regulatory framework, increased government support, and increased engagement of local 
organizations and community groups.
The intermediate outcomes supporting these two SO include: improving the quality of literacy 
instruction, implementing activities that increase student attendance and improve in-class 
concentration, increasing students’ access to food, providing access to school supplies and materials, 
improving literacy instruction materials, improving school infrastructure, promoting knowledge of 
health and hygiene practices, and increasing access to water and sanitation services and preventative 
health interventions. 
Using best practices in EGRA, a pilot literacy project in 51 schools will test a holistic approach to 
improve student learning outcomes. Literacy activities focus on grades 1 to 3. Grade 1 literacy activities 
are held in Arabic. Grades 2 and 3 activities are in both Arabic and French. School feeding and other 
activities such as providing THR, improving school infrastructure, providing deworming medication, and 
PTA training and awareness campaigns will focus on all primary school grades (1 to 6). 
School Selection 
The 209 schools, including the 51 pilot schools, were selected among 400 schools in close collaboration 
with the GoM using the following criteria:
 Schools with six cycles/grades (complete cycles/ full-scale5) were prioritized but the MOE
highlighted that it is difficult to find 209 schools which meet this requirement especially in rural 
areas. Only 31 percent of primary schools in Mauritania are complete (full-scale) schools.
 Schools that are close to local villages (1 to 2 kilometers). This increases enrollment of students 
and is in line with GoM policy. 
 Engagement and active participation of the community toward the project.
 Schools accessible anytime for commodity transportation.
 Schools with infrastructure such as storerooms, latrines, and water sources.
 Schools with enrollment from 40 to more than 400 students.
Once the 209 schools were selected, Counterpart and the MOE chose the 51 pilot schools using the 
criteria below:
5 A complete/full cycle primary school is one with all six grades. 
10
 Rural schools that are in proximity to 1 to 3 communes in Brakna and Gorgol and distance 
between schools does not exceed 5 kilometers. 
 Schools must have six grades with sufficient French and Arabic speaking teachers (30 to 40
percent Francophone teachers and 60 to 70 percent Arabic-speaking teachers). 
 The early grades 1, 2, and 3 have both French and Arabic ongoing literacy programs. The 
schools do not have a multi-grade system (two grades in one classroom) or double vacation 
(one grade in the morning and the other one in the afternoon). 
 Engagement and active participation of the PTA toward the project to increase parental support 
for education and literacy.
 The SMC should be willing to sign a Memorandum of Understanding and engage actively in the 
pilot project. 
Project Activities
The project has a total of 21 activities that work toward intermediate results in all 209 schools. Seven 
of these activities are literacy-related and will focus on the 51 literacy pilot schools. Below are the 
activity descriptions as written the in the project’s Attachment A: Plan of Operation. 
1. Capacity Building: Local, Regional, and National Levels: To build government capacity, 
Counterpart will work with the MOE to form a Technical Working Group (TWG) of ministry 
officials that includes officials from the Division of School Nutrition and Health. Counterpart will 
coordinate training for the working group’s members. Counterpart will also arrange a “regional 
peer-to-peer mentoring program with Ministry of Education in Senegal and lead strategic 
exchange visits to Senegal for both the school feeding and literacy pilot.” Along with these 
efforts, Counterpart will work with the government to establish a fund for managing school 
canteens.
2. Building/Rehabilitation: Latrines: Counterpart will carry out a participatory assessment to 
identify which rural schools do not have latrines. Schools will be prioritized and selected based 
on the size of the school (number of students impacted) and financial mobilization. Community 
stakeholders will participate by providing materials and labor to build the latrines, and the SMC 
will help manage the process. Counterpart will lead a training on latrine cleaning, and the SMC 
will have a latrine maintenance plan. Accompanying the latrine will be a WASH training 
component. Counterpart will implement this activity in 50 schools in the Gorgol and Brakna 
regions.The final school selection will be determined after the assessment. 
3. Building Rehabilitation: Warehouse and Storerooms: Counterpart will carry out a participatory 
assessment to identify which rural schools do not have storerooms. Schools will be prioritized
and selected based on the size of the school (number of students impacted) and financial 
mobilization. Community stakeholders will participate by providing materials and labor to build 
the storerooms, and the SMC will help manage the process. In total, communities will be 
expected to contribute up to 50 percent of the cost of storeroom construction. Construction of 
a simple 4m x 4m model will be the starting point and then adapted to each school.
Counterpart will implement this activity in 116 schools in the Gorgol and Brakna regions. The 
final school selection will be determined after the assessment. 
11
4. Building/Rehabilitation: Wells and Water Station Systems: Counterpart will carry out a 
participatory assessment to identify which schools do not have water station systems. 
Counterpart will work with communities to address their water needs at school, assessing each 
school’s options to source water, while always respecting water quality norms and safety 
standards for point of consumption. Counterpart will work closely with MOE, municipal 
authorities, and National Office for Water Services in Rural Areas (ONSER), the agency 
responsible for rural water infrastructure and planning water station systems. Community 
stakeholders will participate by making in-kind contributions, while municipal government 
and/or ONSER will be asked for a financial contribution. Counterpart will implement this activity 
in 68 schools in the Gorgol and Brakna regions. The final school selection will be determined 
after the assessment. 
5. Distribution of Deworming Medication, Vitamins and Minerals: Counterpart will provide 
deworming medicine to cover affected students at all schools for helminth infections and 
Schistosomiasis in all participating schools. This treatment will be provided in those localities 
identified by the Ministry of Health (MOH) as needing treatment. Counterpart will provide 
information for students about Schistosomiasis during the deworming campaign. Counterpart 
will work with the MOH and other development partners to advocate for a formal MOE/MOH 
policy on deworming in school-aged children. Through a partnership with Vitamin Angels, 
Counterpart also plans to distribute Vitamin A to students and multi-vitamins to pregnant 
women.
6. Promote Teacher Attendance: Counterpart will work with education authorities, community 
members, and teachers to reduce teacher absences. Counterpart, in collaboration with 
National Education Inspection Department (IDEN), school directors, and teachers, will assess 
the needs of the participating schools and identify appropriate methods to address teacher 
absenteeism. Counterpart will also promote teacher attendance through recognition events. 
Counterpart and IDEN will next identify a set of criteria to assess teacher excellence and put in 
place a process to recognize and reward teacher excellence. Once established, evaluation 
criteria and the process will be amply communicated to teachers. Annual recognition of an 
exemplary teacher will be based on best attendance record, and one teacher will be recognized 
at a public ceremony with the community. The PTA and SMC oversight role will be strengthened 
through trainings to improve monitoring of teacher absenteeism. Counterpart will establish a 
transparent monitoring process with clear reporting mechanisms in line with current MOE
policies The PTA and SMC oversight role will be strengthened through trainings to improve 
monitoring of teacher absenteeism. Counterpart will establish a transparent monitoring 
process with clear reporting mechanisms in line with current MOE policies. 
7. Provide Energy Saving Stoves: Counterpart will equip all 209 schools with locally-purchased
stoves. Cooks will be trained on how to use and maintain them. 
8. School Meal Provision: The school feeding program will start in program Year 2, expanding by 3 
percent per year. School meals will consist of a nutritious breakfast five days a week and 
midday school meal four days a week. Each student will receive a daily breakfast ration of 100 g 
of CSB+ and 20 g oil. Students will each receive a lunch ration (Monday–Thursday) of 100 g 
fortified rice and 20 g peas or lentils and 20 g of oil. Peas and lentils will be rotated to make the 
lunches tastier and more enticing to the children. In Year 5, only a lunch ration will be provided. 
CSB+ will be used as a THR for mothers participating in the MCN activity. Counterpart will train 
12
School Canteen Committees (SCC), along with the SMC and PTA, in their roles and 
responsibilities. Counterpart will create a training module in local languages to guide SCC 
trainings, as well as a manual for managing a school canteen adapted to the needs of the SCC.
9. Raising Community and Parental Awareness of the Importance of Education: Counterpart will 
raise awareness about (1) the expected impact of the canteen, (2) the leadership and oversight 
role of parents and community members around the school canteens, and (3) school 
enrollment. Counterpart will hold school meetings about these issues at the start of the school 
year. Counterpart will blanket target communities with training about schooling using local 
radio and community events. Approximately nine radio stations, one per department, will 
broadcast a show every two months, and Counterpart will organize 1-2 community gatherings 
per year at school with education themed festivities. Counterpart will reach out to all 
community members, especially members of minority ethnic groups, and design simple 
interactive radio emissions in local languages on different topics. Counterpart will work with 
each school community to select a group of 5-10 volunteer women to serve as a mothers’ 
mobilization group that will carry outdoor-to-door enrollment campaigns. At the end of each 
annual enrollment campaign, running from September to November, Counterpart will assess its 
success and make improvements for the following year.
10. Take Home Rations: Rations will also be provided to mothers participating in community-level 
MCN activities, specifically targeting pregnant and lactating women and mothers of children 
under five years of age. Women with children under the age of five will be invited to participate 
in routine education sessions under the existing health programs with education provided as 
described in Activity -Training: Good Health and Nutrition Practices. A THR of 5 kg of CSB+ will 
be offered on a quarterly basis as an incentive for participating in all education sessions offered 
and describing a qualifying message and/or change in behavior in a quarterly survey. 
The project will implement several trainings to support educational results, nutritional outcomes, and 
local coordination of project activities.
11. Training: Food Preparation and Storage Practices: Counterpart will train the SCC and school 
cooks in safe food preparation, proper food storage, and adherence to portion sizes. Cooks will 
learn about measuring portions with local serving materials, safety, and nutrition standards, 
and completing monitoring forms. Counterpart will put in place a well-understood first-in/first￾out and minimum-maximum inventory system at each school to ensure proper and safe storage 
of commodities. An effective school-wide oversight system will also prevent any waste or 
leakage of food commodities.
12. Training: Good Health and Nutrition Practices: Counterpart will work with existing health 
officers and community workers to carry out a participatory mapping of health actors and their 
activities in the targeted communities. Gaps in content and coverage will be identified and 
Counterpart will work with existing health systems and personnel to strengthen nutrition￾focused interventions to improve nutrition, health, and hygiene practices of mothers and their 
children under five, as well as pregnant and lactating women in targeted communities.
Counterpart will adapt existing learning modules about nutrition and WASH for school-age 
children, created by United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and others, to the 
Mauritanian context to train teachers and SCC/PTA/SMC members on nutrition and WASH 
information. Once trained, these school stakeholders will be responsible for transferring the 
13
information to students in a variety of ways—teachers will be encouraged to integrate the 
information into class discussions: schools can paint murals on the sides of newly built latrines 
or school warehouses and schools will hold two Health/Nutrition/WASH themed fairs over the 
course of the school year. Counterpart will provide education on the importance of dietary 
diversity, dietary resources, and supplementation with iron and folate, which is especially 
important during pregnancy and lactation. THR will be used as an incentive for behavior change 
by mothers around those improved practices. Parents and community members will be invited 
to attend fairs. Counterpart will complement one of these fairs with a deworming campaign.
13. Training: Parent Teacher Associations: Counterpart will train PTA, SMC, and SCC in their
respective roles and responsibilities. The PTA will be trained in mobilizing parents to participate 
in the school canteen, school governance, and in school programs, etc. SMC representatives will 
be trained in school governance. The SCC will be trained in canteen management. Counterpart 
will use existing modules and make necessary modifications to adapt them to the needs of 
these trainings. A refresher training will be given in Project Year 4 for two days. Counterpart will 
monitor SMC, PTA, and SCC functioning and will offer practical guidance as needed. The SMC 
and PTA will be invited (in literacy pilot schools) to share aggregated student academic results 
with the larger community. Schools will be invited to submit a focused school improvement 
plan. 
14. Training: School Administrators: Counterpart will train directors in managing a school, 
including personnel management, community engagement, administrative management, and 
resolving conflict. Counterpart will identify what directors need to know (based on MOE
regulations and processes) to create a training module on knowledge and skills needed to 
succeed. Directors will be trained in four-day workshops; a two-day refresher training will be 
given the following year.
Pilot Activities
In addition to these activities, the project will implement a literacy pilot in 51 of the 209 primary 
schools as mentioned earlier. The pilot seeks to improve early grade reading (EGR) outcomes by 
conducting the following seven activities: 
15. Distribution of School Supplies and Materials: Counterpart will provide textbooks and 
teachers’ guides in the literacy pilot schools. Counterpart will work with the SMC and PTA to 
ensure oversight and accountability of these school materials by teachers and students. 
Counterpart will work with the MOE to explore policy options for a sustainable supply of 
learning materials as textbooks for students and guides for teachers are fundamental to a 
successful school system.
16. Literacy Promotion: Counterpart will provide textbooks and teachers’ guides in the literacy 
pilot schools. Counterpart will work with the SMC and PTA to ensure oversight and 
accountability of these school materials by teachers and students. Counterpart will work with 
the MOE to explore policy options for a sustainable supply of learning materials as textbooks 
for students and guides for teachers are fundamental to a successful school system. 
17. Organization of Extra-curricular Activities: Counterpart will work with select schools to 
establish reading clubs. Volunteer club leaders will be trained in maintaining a club and given a 
14
menu of core activities to make the clubs interactive and fun; they will also be encouraged to 
innovate their own activities. In urban schools with access to internet, clubs will incorporate 
electronic materials to read texts online and play interactive reading games.
18. Production of Books and Supplementary Reading Materials: Counterpart will design and 
produce simple, low-cost textbooks aligned with the revised literacy curriculum. Textbooks in 
Year 1 are in Arabic only, textbooks in Years 2 and 3 are in Arabic and French. Counterpart will 
engage the TWG in a series of material development workshops to design the content. All 
materials will be adapted to the Mauritanian context. Counterpart will bring outside technical 
experts to assist and contribute to design work. Counterpart will work with schools and parents 
to develop high-quality reading materials that are adapted to the Mauritanian context. These 
books will contribute to book banks in the classroom and will also be used in the reading clubs. 
Counterpart and school stakeholders will work together to identify protection and storage 
methods. Teachers, students, parents, illustrators, and language specialists will participate in 
material development workshops to produce stories.
19. Curriculum Development: Counterpart will implement a literacy pilot in 51 schools. 
Counterpart will first design a scope and sequence across the first three grades for teaching 
letters and developing decodable words and text/stories. Secondly, Counterpart will produce 
teaching guides. The guides will support teachers to develop reading fluency and 
comprehension skills in Arabic in Grades 1-3, and in developing oral language skills in French as 
a second language in Grade 2, and initial reading skills in Grade 3. Teachers’ guides for each 
class will be produced and distributed to classroom for teacher use in years/grades 1-3. Year 1 
guides are in Arabic while Years 2 and 3 are in French and Arabic. All work on the curriculum 
and materials will be complete by Y3 and then revised in the final year based on results and 
findings from the pilot. Counterpart will include information dissemination at key stages in the 
process both targeted towards decision makers in the GoM and to education system 
stakeholders (teachers, inspectors, etc.).
20. Training Teachers: Counterpart will cluster schools for the teacher training and will use a 
cascade training (ToT) approach. Counterpart will organize two initial trainings for Master 
trainers and literacy coaches who will then train teachers. Regional Directorate of National 
Education (DREN)/IDEN are included in the ToT as participants even though they might not 
necessarily give the training. Teacher training has been divided into four in-service sessions to 
cover the revised curriculum and the new teaching method and tools. These trainings will last 
for five days each, for a total of 20 training days. Counterpart will execute intensive in-class 
support for the first three years of the program. Teachers will have twice monthly coaching 
sessions with literacy coaches as well as pedagogical visits and support from DREN/IDEN. 
Coaching sessions will include feedback sessions with teachers. Counterpart will facilitate 
cluster-based peer learning and exchange starting late in PY2.
21. Training: Government Officials: Counterpart will create training modules that are aligned with 
the revised curriculum and the teacher training. Approximately 30 DREN/IDEN officials will be 
trained in the same content as teachers and will receive additional training on coaching and 
supervising skills. As part of this training, participants will be asked to produce a coaching 
calendar to plan for regular visits to literacy pilot schools. Counterpart will assist with 
transportation costs associated with the additional coaching and inspection visits to pilot 
schools. Counterpart will support DREN/IDEN to acquire the skills to carry out a “mini EGRA,” a 
15
tool to provide a macro view of student reading levels in a department. Counterpart will
coordinate IDEN inspectors to shadow the program’s independent evaluation team for the 
midline evaluation EGRA. Counterpart will train IDEN in the EGRA methodology and assist with 
practice exercises in schools, the results of which will be used to inform coaching and training 
sessions. Counterpart literacy coaches will provide in-classroom support during the pilot 
program, as the DREN/IDEN gradually assumes the coaching role. Counterpart will work with 
DNES to design a survey tool using both quantitative and qualitative data to capture the level of 
canteen performance and the level of “customer satisfaction” of end users—students, parents, 
the SCC, and cooks. A calendar of activities will be established to carry out the survey on an 
annual basis starting in PY3.
Activities targeting all the 209 schools Activities ONLY in 51 Pilot schools
Capacity Building: Local, Regional, and National Level
Building/Rehabilitation: Latrines
Curriculum Development
Building/Rehabilitation: Warehouses and Storerooms Distribution: School Supplies and 
Materials
Building/Rehabilitation: Wells and Water Station 
Systems
Establish Activities to Promote 
Literacy
Distribution: Deworming Medication, Vitamins and 
Minerals
Extra-curricular Activities
Promote Teacher Attendance Production of Books and 
Supplementary Reading Materials
Provide Energy Saving Stoves
Provide School Meals Training: Teachers
Raising community and parental awareness of the 
importance of education
Training: Government Officials
Take-Home Rations
Training: Food Preparation and Storage Practices
Training: Good Health and Nutrition Practices
Training: Parent Teacher Associations
Training: School Administrators
The project’s implementation plan includes data collection activities and learning activities to identify 
innovations, results, and opportunities for adaptation. This approach enables the project team to make 
evidence-based decisions and analyze results so that successful initiatives are scaled, and less 
successful initiatives are modified or dropped. 
Baseline Assessment Report Background Scope
16
Counterpart contracted IMC to conduct the baseline assessment for The Future is Ours! 
The purpose of the baseline assessment was to produce a baseline report containing descriptive 
statistics of baseline indicators that require non-zero measurements disaggregated by gender, 
department, and grade, and recommendations on methodology for implementing subsequent 
evaluations. The baseline assessment was also required to operationalize research questions included 
in the scope of work (Annex 4) so that they could be answered by midterm, final, and impact 
evaluations. These questions are addressed in section 3.2 of the full report. 
IMC completed the following tasks for the baseline assessment:
• Reviewed all relevant project documents. 
• Produced an inception report with the methodology and approach of the baseline assessment
and operationalized the research questions and indicators. 
• Trained the supervisors of Tenmiya, the local data collection firm. 
• Oversaw testing and piloting of the data collection tools. 
• Managed data collection activities, including surveys and interviews with students, teachers, 
directors, MOE officials, and parents to collect high quality data to provide baseline values for 
the research questions and for project indicators. 
• Conducted an EGRA for students completing grade 2 and entering grade 3 at the time of data 
collection. 
• Produced a baseline report containing (a) descriptive statistics of baseline values, where 
appropriate, disaggregated by gender, department, and grade; and (b) recommendations on 
the methodology for implementing subsequent assessments.
2. ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY
Data Sources and Data Collection Methods
The baseline assessment followed a mixed methods approach to data collection and analysis that 
included secondary sources6, qualitative data collection in the form of semi-structured interviews, and 
quantitative data collection through stakeholder questionnaires. The assessment also took a 
measurement of primary school student literacy using the EGRA methodology. The assessment team 
developed tablet-based data collection tools for the EGRA assessment, surveys, and qualitative data 
collection guides. 
Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) 
6 The evaluation used secondary sources to inform the background section of this report and to design the French and 
Arabic EGRA tools. Secondary sources included the EGRA Toolkit and studies conducted by organizations such as confemen. 
The secondary sources are cited in footnotes throughout this section of the report. 
17
The IMC assessment team created two EGRA 
tools: one in French and one in Arabic. The team 
designed the EGRA tools using the EGRA Toolkit, 
Second Edition7, and adjusted the difficulty level 
according to the advice from Counterpart’s The 
Future is Ours! project team. 
The EGRA tools assessed student performance in
activities (known as sub-tasks), beginning with
the most basic literacy skills and progressing to 
the most difficult skills. When implemented, the 
EGRA assessment asks students to demonstrate 
basic literacy skills before moving to more 
complex tasks. 
For example, a student who cannot recognize any words is not asked to read a passage or demonstrate 
reading comprehension. The range of skills that students are asked to complete, from easiest to most 
complex, are:
1. Phoneme Recognition 2. Character Recognition 
3. Word Recognition 4. Reading Passage
5. Reading Comprehension 6. Writing
The assessment team, with input from Counterpart, adjusted the difficulty of the EGRA’s standard
reading passage and comprehension questions to reflect the reading abilities that a Mauritanian
student may have achieved after two years of schooling. The team’s design ensured that both EGRA 
tools were regionally appropriate in terms of phoneme use, grammar norms, and cultural relevance. 
The baseline’s EGRA assessment measured students’ literacy achievement in Arabic and French. 
However, achievement in different languages is not directly comparable because patterns in literacy 
acquisition vary by language. For example, while French speakers need to learn both capital and lower￾case letters, Arabic letters do not contain upper and lower cases. Therefore, an Arabic-literate student 
may read more letters per minute than a French-literate student. However, that does not indicate that 
an Arabic-literate student has achieved a higher degree of literacy. Conversely, a student who has 
mastered isolate forms of the Arabic alphabet but is unable to recognize them in contextual forms may 
not read words as quickly as a student in French who had dedicated the same number of hours to 
learning. 
7 The EGRA toolkit can be found here: https://ierc-publicfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/public/resources/EGRA Toolkit V2 
2016.pdf
Source: Counterpart International
18
The assessment team selected four students per school who were completing grade 2 for the 2019-
2020 school year to take the EGRA. For the baseline, students were randomly assigned so that half of 
the selected students took the French assessment and half took the Arabic assessment. 
The literacy indicator MGD 1: Percent of students who, by the end of two grades of primary schooling, 
demonstrate that they can read and understand the meaning of grade level text, measures the 
proportion of students who meet a minimum threshold of literacy competency at each assessment
point. The assessment team could not determine minimum thresholds of literacy found because 
information on Mauritania’s standardized assessment data is not released publicly, and the country 
does not participate in international student assessments. However, it ranks among the 10 lowest 
countries in youth literacy in the world (for which there is data).8 The most recent available student 
literacy data is the 2003-2004 Programme d’analyse des systems éducatifs de la confem (PASEC) from 
the Conference of Ministers of Education of French-Speaking Countries.
9 Although correct words per 
minute were not published for the assessment, the average reading score for second graders in 
Mauritania were lower than any other country that participated in the test. While school enrollment 
has dramatically increased since 2003, the recent evidence on youth literacy and PASEC scores 
suggests that the baseline assessment should use a lower threshold to measure literacy. 
Because of the paucity of external sources, the assessment team defined literacy proficiency based on 
the data, which showed that most students are still learning to recognize letters and phonemes. The 
assessment team defined proficiency for this indicator as, “the ability to read at least 20 letters per 
minute.” This measurement is based on the letter and phoneme recognition assessment, subtask 2 of 
the EGRA. The 20 letters per minute target was arrived at by understanding the distribution of student 
achievement at baseline: 42.3 percent of students tested in Arabic could not read any letters, 21.7 
percent could read some letters, but fewer than 20 per minute, and 35.0 percent could read at least 20 
correct letters per minute. 
Similarly, in French, most students (85.0 percent) could recognize at least one letter, but only 8.1
percent could read 20 letters in a minute. These figures, along with disaggregated data by gender and 
region, are included in Table 2. 
EGRA Index Calculation
While each subtask has an independent score, there is no standardized guidance on how to create a 
final single EGRA score. For simplicity, an overall EGRA score was calculated using a weighted average 
of the five subtask scores, where subtasks 2, 3, and 4 (which contain 100, 50, and 50 items 
8 Education Policy Data Center (2018). Mauritania National Education Profile. 
https://www.epdc.org/sites/default/files/documents/EPDC_NEP_2018_Mauritania.pdf
9
http://www.pasec.confemen.org/publication/la-qualite-de-leducation-en-mauritanie-quelles-ressources-pour-quels￾resultats/
19
respectively) were given twice the weight of subtasks 1 and 5, which contain 5 items each (Table 2). To 
account for greater variation, correct words per minute was scaled to 50 items.10
Table 1 EGRA Index Calculation
Subtask Calculated As Weighting
1. Sound Recognition Percent Correct (5 items) 12.5%
2. Phoneme Reading Correct letters per minute 25.0%
3. Devised Words Correct words per minute 25.0%
4. Oral Reading Correct words per minute 25.0%
5. Reading Comprehension Percent Correct (5 items) 12.5%
Other Surveys and Qualitative Data Collection
In addition to the EGRA, the assessment collected data through the following means: 
1. Survey for students in grades 1-6 
2. Survey for teachers
3. Survey for directors/school checklist
4. Qualitative interviews with parents
5. Qualitative interviews with government officials
Each of the quantitative surveys used open- and closed-ended questions. The open-ended questions 
provided context and probed responses for more details. 
6. Questions for students focused on absences and WASH practices. 
7. Questions for teachers focused on student attentiveness, teaching materials, teacher trainings 
received prior to The Future is Ours! and teacher absenteeism. 
8. Director interviews/school checklists included questions on attendance, enrollment, and water 
and sanitary facilities. 
9. A short question guide for interviews with parents focused on student WASH practices, food 
consumption, and school absences. 
10. A question guide for interviews with government officials, as well as regional and departmental 
inspectors, focused on challenges to improving literacy and recommendations for The Future is 
Ours! 
10 For example, a student who scored on subtask 1 60%; subtask 2 20 letters per minute; subtask 3 50 cwpm; subtask 4 55 
cwpm; and subtask 5 20%, their score would be calculated as: (12.5*0.6)+25*(20/50+50/50+50/50)+(12.5*0.2), or 70.
20
Changes to The Assessment Implementation Due to COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic required that the 
evaluation team change the way that this 
evaluation was conducted compared to the 
methodology the team has used in past 
evaluations of McGovern-Dole projects. 
Primarily, these limitations relate to the 
way international staff interacted with the 
data collection team and project 
stakeholders. In previous McGovern-Dole 
evaluations, at least two international team 
members travel to the project country to 
train enumerators and conduct qualitative 
interviews with all stakeholder groups. 
International team members also usually 
travel with enumerators to project schools 
to spot check data collection and 
troubleshoot any issues that arise. 
To limit the spread of COVID-19, the 
evaluation team took measures to reduce 
face-to-face contact among international 
team members, the data collection team, 
and project stakeholders. Only one team 
member, rather than two, traveled to 
Mauritania. That team member trained the 
data collection team while the EGRA 
specialist observed remotely using a Zoom 
connection. One team member was not 
sufficient to cover all the qualitative interviews that were required for the assessment, so the team 
member focused on government and project staff interviews. To make up for the inability to interview 
other stakeholder groups, the evaluation team included questions requiring qualitative responses in 
the teacher, parent, and school director questionnaires. While these types of questions do not present 
the same depth of narrative as full interviews, they do allow for the discovery of unexpected 
information that contributes to understanding. 
In addition to limiting travel, the evaluation team took other precautions to prevent the spread of the 
virus. Project teams were limited to four members per vehicle, as per Mauritanian regulations, which 
increased the costs of implementing the evaluation. Data collection teams were also provided with 
masks and hand sanitizer. 
Sampling Strategy
Assessment Design Overview
Source: Counterpart International
21
The baseline assessment used a quasi-experimental design that allows for a comparison between
McGovern-Dole literacy pilot schools and McGovern-Dole schools that do not have the literacy pilot 
project. The assessment used a two-stage cluster design. The first stage comprised the selection of
schools to participate in the assessment, and the second stage comprised the selection of students (for 
EGRA and the student survey), directors, teachers, and parents within each school. In total, 146 of 209 
McGovern-Dole schools (95 randomly selected non-literacy pilot schools, 51 literacy pilot schools) were 
included in this assessment. 
The sample design allows for a strong comparison between literacy instruction plus school feeding 
(McGovern-Dole pilot) schools and just school feeding schools (McGovern-Dole non-pilot schools). This 
sample design is more important for comparison at midterm and final evaluations than in the baseline
assessment. 
EGRA Sample Size and Selection
The sample size for the EGRA is based on finding a minimum detectable effect of the McGovern-Dole
indicator: SO1: Percent of students who, by the end of two grades of primary schooling, demonstrate 
that they can read and understand the meaning of grade level text. Since EGRA is only conducted for 
students at the end of grade 2 (only one grade out of six total), the student sample size for EGRA is 
different than the other indicators that look at all six grade levels. 
Two-Stage Cluster
The sample strategy used a two-stage cluster design. The first stage randomly selected the schools for 
inclusion in the sample, and the second stage randomly selected four students entering grade 3 at each 
school to participate in the EGRA. To estimate the minimum sample size for learning outcomes, the 
assessment team assumed that 10 percent of the sample will meet a minimum literacy threshold at 
baseline, and the aim was to detect when 17.5 percent or more students pass the minimum learning 
requirement at midterm or final evaluations. The sample size of students was calculated using the 
standard parameters of 0.80 power and 0.05 significance level. An intra-cluster correlation coefficient 
of 0.15 was used in the calculation. The resulting cluster size of four students per school produced a 
sample size of 584 EGRA takers in 146 schools.11 This small cluster size allowed the assessment team to 
visit more schools which increased the statistical power of the director/school checklist survey 
(discussed below). 
Four students at the end of grade 2 were randomly selected from school enrollment lists at each 
school. At each school, survey teams used random number generators on their tablets to select four 
random numbers corresponding to numbered students on grade 2 enrollment lists. Two students were 
randomly assigned to take the French EGRA and two the Arabic version of EGRA. If a selected student 
was not present on the day of the assessment, then a replacement student was randomly selected. 
Sample Weighting
11 Sample sizes calculated with Stata and manually. 
22
Although the values in Table 2 EGRA Index Calculation represent the true number of observations, 
statistical weighting was used to calculate means and percentages. The sample was designed to have a 
1:2 ratio of pilot to non-pilot schools, though the actual ratio of pilot to non-pilot schools is 1:3.
12 By 
oversampling pilot schools, statistical differences between the two groups are more easily detected. 
However, to ensure that the results overall are unbiased, slightly higher weight was given to non-pilot 
schools so that non-pilot to pilot schools influence the means at the same ratio of actual pilot to non￾pilot schools.
Sample Composition
In total, the samples include 291 valid assessments in French and 271 valid assessments in Arabic. A 
valid assessment is an entire EGRA completed by a student in the correct grade. Students were 46.4
percent female in the French subset and 51.7 percent female in the Arabic subset. In limited cases, 
enumerators did not successfully complete two assessments in each language at each school. Also, a 
small number of assessments were excluded because they were completed by a student in the wrong 
grade. 
Table 2 EGRA sample composition
French Arabic
Group # % # %
Total 291 100% 271 100%
Pilot13 94 32.3% 87 32.1%
Non-Pilot 197 67.7% 184 67.9%
Female14 135 46.4% 140 51.7%
Male 148 50.9% 129 47.6%
Brakna 187 64.3% 176 64.9%
Gorgol 103 35.4% 95 35.1%
Slightly less than two-thirds of both EGRA samples were from the Brakna region, and the remainder 
from the Gorgol region. 
Chi-square tests of equality did not find significant differences between the two randomly selected 
samples in their composition by ethnicity, department, or sex. While these results do not guarantee 
12 The weights are designed as a ratio of 51 pilot and 158 non-pilot schools. 13 Due to nonresponses, some subgroups may add up to less than the total sample. 14 While the assessments were given correctly and passed our quality review, 8 assessments did not include a response to 
gender, and an enumerator did not fill out the region and community it was conducted in. The assessment was still valid 
but missing this information. While the assessment intentionally included an option to not respond to the gender question, 
the option to not fill out the region and community was an oversight.
23
that the two samples are representative of the entire beneficiary group, it suggests there are no 
differences due to random error (please see Annex 2 for details). 
Other Survey Sample Size and Selection
The other surveys’ (non-EGRA students, teachers, and directors) sample sizes are based on the 146
schools selected for the EGRA. The non-EGRA student survey includes one student from each grade (1 
through 6) at each of these 146 schools, for a total of six students per school and 876 for the entire 
survey. This sample size allows detection of increases as small as from 1 to 1.3 handwashing 
occurrences per day with 0.80 power and 0.05 significance. Students from grades 1 through 6 were 
randomly selected using the enrollment lists at each school as described above. 
The team also conducted interviews with one director from each school and interviewed up to three 
teachers of grades 1 through 3 per school. Teachers were selected based on availability. The results 
from these surveys have smaller sample sizes and lower precision than the EGRA and student surveys. 
A summary of expected and actual sample size by group is shown in Table 4 below.
Table 3: Quantitative Survey Sample Sizes
Interviews 
per school
McGovern-Dole
Pilot 
Expected/Actual
McGovern-Dole
non-Pilot 
Expected/Actual
Total Expected/Actual
Schools 51 51 95 95 146 146
EGRA 3.84 204 181 380 381 584 562
Non-EGRA Student 6 306 301 570 554 876 855
Teacher ~ 2.5 127 128 237 211 365 339
Director/checklist 1 51 51 95 95 146 146
Total 2,117 2,048
Data Collection Training
The eight-day training took place in two phases. In the first phase, the assessment team's co-evaluator 
conducted a three-day, in person, training in Nouakchott for the survey team’s eight field supervisors. 
In the second phase, eight field supervisors trained the 16 enumerators. After delivering the field 
supervisor training, the United States-based team members shared PowerPoint presentations and 
other training materials for the field supervisors to use with the enumerators. To take sufficient 
precautions considering the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S.-based EGRA Specialist participated in online
trainings to ensure information was covered thoroughly and to answer any questions that arose. 
The training included the following topics: 
 Introduction: Overview of project, purpose of research, main research questions, and 
objectives for the baseline assessment. 
 Overview of fieldwork: Overview of the sampling strategy, data collection and data entry 
procedures, and troubleshooting. 
 Research ethics and code of conduct in communities: Child protection and treatment of 
children during interviews, informed consent/assent, and confidentiality. 
24
 EGRA: A thorough training on understanding the purpose of EGRA and how to implement it 
using the tablet-based Tangerine application.
 Walk through each questionnaire: A guided question by question walk through for the student, 
director, teacher, and parent questionnaires for trainees on their tablets.
 Practice interviews: Practice interviews were held with fellow trainees. 
Tool Refinement, Piloting, and Debrief
The assessment team finalized the data collection tools in two phases. During supervisor training, 
supervisors gave feedback on improving the tools. These were incorporated in time for piloting. 
Following the three-day supervisor training, supervisors conducted one day of pilot interviews at four 
schools near Nouakchott, which featured all the interview types described above. 
The day after the pilot, the team met again to debrief. During the debrief session, supervisors shared 
their experiences and made final suggestions on how the tools could be improved. These were 
incorporated into the questionnaires and a new version was released prior to the training of 
enumerators the following week. 
Data Analysis
Quantitative data was analyzed using Stata statistical software. Data was disaggregated by 
demographic and geographic characteristics, and by school category and pilot versus non-pilot to 
determine if there are any differences at baseline that will need to be controlled/accounted for at 
midterm and final. In this report, tests of means are reported as significant if p < 0.05.
Qualitative data came in two forms, from interviews and from short answers provided within 
questionnaires. Qualitative data from interviews, which were conducted with government officials, 
was coded using an Excel spreadsheet according to research question topic. The spreadsheets were 
also categorized according to more specific research questions and the evaluation criteria that each 
answer responded to. Coded items were grouped together and then analyzed on their own, 
particularly in the case of project sustainability, or grouped with similarly coded quantitative data to 
add context. 
The evaluation team analyzed qualitative data that came in the form of short answers in stakeholder 
questionnaires by reading through a random selection of responses to understand the themes that 
came up in each short answer. For example, a question about reasons students were late to school 
would produce “sickness,” “lack of transportation,” or “other duties to attend to” as themes. The short 
answers were then recoded according to these major themes, which generally covered 90 to 95
percent of all answers given. The remaining answers were then read to see if they fit into previously 
defined themes or merited a new category of response. 
Data Quality Control and Assurance 
While the survey team was often operating in remote areas with limited internet coverage, they were 
instructed to upload data to the server at least twice weekly. The assessment team monitored progress 
against targets daily using a dashboard. The lead supervisor in Mauritania communicated regularly 
25
with the assessment team to inform them of challenges, such as unreachable schools, and to seek 
solutions. 
After the first week, the assessment team assessed the data quality. This assessment included 
examining interview durations, qualitative response word counts, and outlier values. A brief report 
flagging potential issues was provided to the lead supervisor in Mauritania who addressed these issues 
with his team. He then debriefed the assessment team on what he had learned from his field team 
about the issues flagged.
Limitations
COVID-19 restrictions: The COVID-19 pandemic may have created bias in the assessment results. 
Respondents may have been less willing to participate in interviews, or eager to cut interviews short
because they were fearful of virus transmission. Students may have been less likely to attend school. 
COVID-19 also limited the degree to which the assessment team could conduct trainings in person and 
participate in face-to-face interviews in Mauritania. 
Dependence on school records for enrollment and attendance rates: Several baseline values, such as 
school attendance and enrollment rates, rely on school records. Measurement of changes in student 
attendance and enrollment rely on the discipline with which schools maintain these records 
consistently. Enumerators examined school records at each school that they visited. Every school 
visited had classes for students in grades 1 through 6. Data collectors did not collect information on 
differences in enrollment between male and female students, and so discrepancies in enrollment and 
attendance rates for male and female students is not included in the report. 
Dependence on enrollment and attendance records for literacy assessment: Students were randomly 
selected to participate in the EGRA from enrollment and attendance lists. School directors indicated in 
interviews that occasionally students who did not have official birth certificates may not have 
appeared in school records. Students who did not appear on enrollment or attendance lists would 
have been excluded from the possibility of taking the EGRA. 
Reliance on teachers’ availability: The assessment team could not take a random sample of working 
teachers. The assessment relied on interviewing teachers who were available on the day of the 
assessment, which may have created bias in teacher responses. 
Reliance on perceptions and memory: Many of the baseline assessment’s measurements rely on 
respondent’s perception of behaviors, such as frequency of handwashing. Others asked respondents to 
remember reasons for behaviors, such as missing school or missing taking attendance. While these 
perceptions provide valuable information about the degree to which respondents estimate behaviors 
take place with desirable frequency or quality, they are not as accurate as other measurements that 
observe behaviors. 
Lack of information about literacy standards: The assessment team could not find information on 
Mauritanian standards for primary school literacy, as described in the report. The assessment team 
recommends a measure of proficiency in the report that may not reflect The Future is Ours! project
goals or the policy of the Mauritanian Government. 
3. RESULTS
26
The results section of the report is divided into two sections. 
Section 3.1 presents the values for key indicators and discusses
those values, providing context from key informant interviews 
and secondary research. Section 3.2 addresses the 
operationalization of research questions for the project’s 
midterm and final evaluations. 
Key Indicators
Annex 1 provides a summary of the key indicator framework 
and baseline values. This section discusses the meaning of those 
values so that they may be more useful to the management of 
the project. 
MGD SO1: Improved Literacy of School Aged Children
This section presents the baseline EGRA scores for all students in Arabic and French. The data is
disaggregated by gender and pilot versus non-pilot schools. The complete description of EGRA scores is 
presented in Annex 3: EGRA Explanation and Results. Annex 3 also includes the methodology the 
assessment team used to determine the definition of proficiency. 
The SO1 indicator title and definition are:
Improved Literacy of School Aged Children: Percent of students who, by the end of two grades of 
primary schooling, demonstrate that they can read and understand the meaning of grade level text. 
The baseline assessment team recommends changing the definition of this indicator to, “percent of 
students who, by the end of two grades of primary schooling, demonstrate reading proficiency.” The 
baseline assessment team recommends defining ‘proficiency’ as the ability to read 20 letters per 
minute.
Table 5 shows the percentage of students who could read at least 20 letters per minute at the time of 
the baseline assessment. The baseline team recommends setting a target of increasing the proportion 
of students who can read 20 letters per minute at the end of the second grade by 3 percentage points 
per year of project implementation. This target is reasonable based on the low proficiency scores in 
both languages at baseline, but also the fact that a significant portion of students have learned to read 
some letters in both languages. 
Table 4 Percentage of students who can read 20 letters per minute in Arabic and in French
Language Proficient Target Improvement:
Arabic 32.2% +3% per year
French 5.9% +3% per year
Source: Counterpart International
27
Tracking proficiency level by pilot and non-pilot schools will reveal whether the school’s participation in 
the project correlates with reading improvements. Table 6 shows the current difference in levels of 
proficiency between pilot and non-pilot schools. Pilot schools show statistically significant, lower levels 
of Arabic proficiency than non-pilot schools. This is a surprising result, given that pilot schools were 
often selected because they were more physically accessible than non-pilot schools, which would 
suggest better access to resources such as trainings. Further analysis found that significant differences 
held even when controlling for ethnicity15 and language spoken at home. 
At baseline, students at non-pilot schools achieved higher rates of proficiency in both languages than 
students at pilot schools. Future assessments must measure increases in proficiency over these 
baseline values rather than aiming for a target level of proficiency for all schools. 
Table 5 Reading proficiency; pilot vs non-pilot
Language Proficient
Arabic: Non-pilot 36.4%
Arabic: Pilot 17.2%
French: Non-pilot 6.1%
French: Pilot 5.3%
In French, there was not a statistically significant difference between pilot and non-pilot schools. If 
scores in both languages were significantly higher in non-pilot schools, it may suggest that students 
learned better in one group of schools or the other. However, mixed results by language suggests that 
the difference is caused by other factors.
Male students who took the EGRA test scored slightly higher than female students, though the 
difference was not statistically significant in either language. 
Table 6 Proficiency by gender
Language Proficient 
Female: Arabic 30.4%
Male: Arabic 33.7%
Female: French 5.6%
Male: French 6.0%
15 Schools include students from the Haratine, Beydane, Halpulaar, and Fulani ethnicities. 
28
MGD 1.1 Improved Quality of Literacy Instruction
The baseline assessment measured the percentage of teachers who have received training in literacy 
instruction in the last two years. Teachers who had received training were asked to rank the quality of 
the instruction they received and the quality of materials that were used in the training. 
Teacher Training Attendance
The evaluation interviewed 339 teachers; 43 percent of whom were female and 57 percent were male.
About 35 percent of all teachers said that they had received training in literacy instruction within the 
last two years. At baseline, 13.3 percent more teachers at pilot schools received training than teachers 
at non-pilot schools. The baseline also asked all teachers if they had ever received training, including 
longer ago than two years. Forty percent said they had never received training and 25 percent said 
they had attended a training over two years ago. The differences in the percentage of teachers who
received training disaggregated by region or gender were not significant.
Table 7 Percentage of teachers that had received training in the previous two years
Measure
Total 
result Pilot
Non￾Pilot Difference/Significant Brakna Gorgol Female Male
% of teachers 
receiving literacy 
related training in last 
2 years
34.85 44.53 31.22 13.31/yes 31.63 41.7 36.47 33.7
Quality of Teacher Training
Teachers were asked to rank how well they were trained on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 representing 
not well and 5 representing very well. On average, teachers in pilot schools rated their training 3.52 
and non-pilot rated their training 2.79, indicating that teachers in pilot schools may receive better
training than teachers in non-pilot schools at baseline (Table 9). This significant difference at baseline 
between pilot and non-pilot schools reflects a confounding factor that will influence the statistical 
difference between pilot and non-pilot schools at midterm and final evaluations. The project will 
deliver training to pilot schoolteachers, so one would expect teachers to give their trainings higher 
ratings at future evaluations than at baseline, while non-pilot school trainings should stay the same. 
Therefore, we will compare the pilot schools and non-pilot schools at midterm and end of the project 
with the baseline values to determine the impact of the activity “Teacher Training.” 
The baseline assessment also asked teachers who had received training to rate the materials used in 
their training (Table 9). Teachers at pilot and non-pilot schools rated the materials used in training of 
about equally low quality; 1.83 at pilot schools and 1.78 at non-pilot schools. When asked why they 
rated the materials as they had, teachers said that materials were incomplete, overly relied on text￾based instruction, and were not easily transferable to lesson plans in the classroom, and that trainers 
lacked chalk. 
When asked who had provided the training, 75 percent of teachers said they received training from the 
MOE or local inspectors. The remainder were trained by various Mauritanian and international NGOs, 
29
including Centre de Renforcement de l’Enseignement des Langues (Center for strengthening language 
teaching), The Alliance Franco Mauritania, and World Vision. 
Table 8 Quality of Teacher Training
Measure
Total 
result Pilot
Non￾Pilot Difference/Significant
Teacher ranking of training quality 
on a scale of 1 to 5 2.98 3.52 2.79 0.73/yes
Teacher ranking of training materials 
quality on a scale of 1 to 5 1.8 1.83 1.78 4.65/no
MGD 1.2: Improved Attentiveness
The baseline assessment asked teachers how many times they must take action to refocus the class as 
a means of estimating student ability to pay attention. On average, teachers had to refocus the class 
3.4 times. This number was consistent between pilot and non-pilot schools and region. 
Table 9 Student attentiveness
Total 
result Pilot Non-Pilot
Difference/
Significant Brakna Gorgol
Difference/
Significant
Number of times 
teachers must 
refocus class
3.38 3.37 3.39 -0.02/no 3.21 3.74 -0.53/no
MGD 1.3: Improved Student Attendance 
The evaluation obtained attendance data from school directors for each grade in their school. The 
data, presented in Figure 1, shows that attendance rates are high, ranging from 13.43 percent in 5th
grade absent on average, to 7.67 percent absent in second grade. Annex 1 provides complete data 
disaggregated by pilot and non-pilot schools, and by region where possible.
30
Figure 1 Student attendance by grade
Parents were asked the main reason that their child or children miss school. Table 10 shows the most 
common reasons. Data collectors noted the reasons that each parent gave for their child or children’s
absence. The most common reason parents gave for why their children missed school was illness 
(86.32 percent) and the second most common was teacher absence (17.54 percent) (Table 11). 
Table 10 Most common reasons students miss school
Reason for Absence Percent
Illness 86.32%
Teacher absence 17.54%
Lack School Materials/Clothes 9.12%
Lack of Food 8.77%
Weather/Heat 4.56%
Distance 1.75%
Agriculture/Home Work 1.40%
Playing with Friends 1.40%
Traveling 0.35%
90.31 92.33 90.99 88.56 87.57 89.22
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5 Grade 6
Percent
Attendance by Grade
31
The evaluation also asked parents if their 
children ever missed a portion of the 
school day, either arriving at school late 
or leaving school early. Fifty-one percent
of parents reported that their children 
occasionally missed a portion of the 
school day to return home during recess 
to eat and return to school late. For 
student with homes far away, they may 
not return to school. A large portion 
(approximately 28 percent) of these 
parents also said that their children 
arrive late to school if their breakfast is 
delayed. 
Nearly all parents that the team interviewed said that their children would be more eager to go to 
school if there were a canteen. Some parents even joked that if their child’s school had a well￾maintained canteen, that “we would go to school instead of our children!” 
MGD 1.3.4: Improved Student Enrollment
Annex 1 provides school director-provided enrollment data disaggregated by grade, region, and pilot 
versus non-pilot schools. The baseline assessment found that the average school has 317 students in 
grades 1-6, with about 52 students per grade. However, enrollment declines as grades advance. 
Schools have an average of 60 students in grade 1, and enrollment declines steadily per grade with an 
average of 44 students in grade 6; a 27 percent decline (Figure 2). 
Source: Counterpart International
32
Figure 2 Enrollment by Grade
 
MGD SO2: Increased Use of Health, Nutrition, and Dietary Practices
The definition of SO2 is: The percentage of beneficiaries who can demonstrate knowledge of effective 
health and hygiene practices as a result of USDA assistance. As the school feeding project had not
started yet, there were no volunteer breakfast and lunch cooks or project participants that the baseline 
assessment team could survey about health and hygiene practices. For the baseline measurement, 
students were asked if they washed their hands at home and school, when they washed their hands, 
and what they used to wash their hands. The baseline found that about 13 percent of students said 
that they wash their hands at school and about 15 percent wash their hands at home with soap and 
water after eating and after using the latrine (Table 12 Percentage of students who wash their hands). 
The baseline showed that 7 percent more students wash their hands at pilot schools than non-pilot 
schools. Gender-based and regional differences in the percentage of students that report washing 
hands at school and at home were not significant.
Table 11 Percentage of students who wash their hands
Indicator Total 
result Pilot Non￾Pilot
Diff./Sig
nificant Brakna Gorgol Female Male
% washing hands with soap and 
water before eating and after 
using the latrine (at school)
12.8 18.27 11.01 7.26/yes 13.46 11.63 12.66 13
% washing hands with soap and 
water before eating and after 
using the latrine (at home)
15.33 20.27 13.72 6.55/no 15.85 15 16.4 13.44
60.02
57.2 55.72
51.23
44.7 43.54
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5 Grade 6
Number of Students
Enrollment by Grade
33
The baseline assessment also 
asked parents about their 
handwashing behavior and 
parents’ observations of their 
children’s handwashing behavior. 
Nearly every parent said they 
washed their hands every day 
with soap and water. A small 
number mentioned using water 
and sand. Nearly all parents also 
said that their children washed 
their hands with soap and water 
every day. This finding likely 
demonstrates a high level of 
social desirability bias, especially 
when considered with student’s 
self-reporting about the regularity 
with which they wash their hands. 
However, parents’ responses demonstrate that they know one should wash hands with soap and water 
at least before eating and after using the latrine. 
MGD 2.4: Increased Access to Clean Water and Sanitation Services
The baseline assessment team took an inventory of the quality of schools’ latrines and water sources. 
For latrines, the assessment recorded the percentage of schools that had at least two latrines that 
were marked for boys and girls and were at least somewhat clean and well-maintained (Table 13). 
Table 12 Status of school latrines
Latrines Total Pilot Non-pilot Difference/
Significant
% of schools with 2 or more latrines 84.72 80 86 -6/no
% marked for boys and girls 72.11 58.33 75.58 -17.25/no
% somewhat clean 59.86 58.54 60.22 -1.69/no
% somewhat well-maintained 72.45 63.41 75 -11.59/no
% connected to functioning water source 6.57 9.76 5.68 4.07/no
% with source of water for handwashing 83.84 82.83 84.09 -1.16/no
% with soap 32.19 26.83 33.72 -6.89/no
% with clean towel 0 0 0 0/no
The baseline also noted whether the latrines were connected to a water source, whether there was a 
source of water for washing hands, and whether soap and a clean towel were available. The 
assessment found that most schools met most criteria, with a large majority having two latrines, and 
Source: Counterpart International
34
slightly fewer with latrines marked for boys and girls. Only 6.57 percent had latrines connected to a 
water source, however. Also, even though 84 percent had a source of water for handwashing, only 32 
percent had soap, and none had a clean towel. 
The baseline also measured the quality of school’s water sources. Sixty-four percent of schools had a 
source of water on the property. The remainder had an off-property, nearby source that took an 
average of less than three minutes to reach. Pilot schools off-property water sources were closer than 
those at non-pilot schools, but the difference, just over a minute, is marginal. 
Table 13 School sources of water
Total Pilot Non-pilot Difference
% with water source on property 64.03 68 62.77 5.23/no
Distance of those off-property in minutes 2.87 2 3.11 -1.11/yes
% water source well-functioning 45.09 42.22 45.98 -3.75/no
Research Questions
Project Level Performance 
The project level performance question is: 
• Have project outputs and outcome targets been achieved?
Future evaluations will use the baseline assessment’s values to report on the project’s output and 
outcome-related achievements where appropriate. The recommendations of this report provide 
specific guidance for measuring results using pilot and non-pilot schools, and for indicators that 
showed a significant difference between pilot and non-pilot schools at baseline. 
School feeding and Nutrition 
The school feeding and nutrition research questions are: 
● What is the effect of school feeding on attendance, enrollment, and attention? 
● What is the interaction between school feeding and improved hygiene practices?
The baseline assessment did not identify any schools that currently provide a school feeding program 
for their students besides the McGovern-Dole project. However, it was found that 31 percent of 
schools were part of a previous school feeding project implemented by WFP in Brakna and Gorgol 
regions from 2012 to 2017. This project was closed in 2018. More information on the history of 
school feeding in Mauritania is provided above. Counterpart’s current school meals activity consists of 
a nutritious breakfast five days a week and midday school meal four days a week. Each student 
receives a daily breakfast ration of 100 g of CSB+ and 20 g oil. Students each receive a lunch ration 
(Monday–Thursday) of 100 g fortified rice and 20 g peas or lentils and 20 g of oil. Peas and lentils will 
be rotated to make the lunches tastier and more enticing to the children. In Year 5, only a lunch ration 
will be provided. CSB+ will be used as a THR for mothers participating in the MCN activity. 
35
Baseline values for attendance, enrollment, and attention are provided in Annex 1 and discussed in 
sections 3.1.3, 3.1.4, and 3.1.4. Values for hygiene practices are discussed in section 3.1.6. 
Education and Literacy Research 
Under education and literacy, future assessments will answer two research questions:
• How effective are reading-oriented extra-curricular activities in improving literacy? 
• How effective are teacher trainings? 
Extra-curricular activities
To support the measurement of whether or not extra-curricular activities are effective in improving 
literacy, the baseline assessment asked students whether or not they participated in extra-curricular 
reading activities at baseline. The baseline found that overall, 20.3 percent of students said that they 
participate in these activities. The percentage was about the same between pilot and non-pilot 
schools. However, a considerably higher percentage of students in Gorgol (34%) said they participated 
in extra-curricular reading activities than Brakna (12.6%). The baseline assessment did not take an 
inventory of the extra-curricular or measure their quality. 
Table 15 Participation in extra-curricular activities
Measure
Total 
result Pilot
Non￾Pilot
Difference/
Significant Brakna Gorgol
Difference/
Significant Female Male
% participating in 
extracurricular 
reading activities
20.31 18.94 20.76 -1.82/no 12.61 33.96 -21.35/yes 20.18 20.54
The baseline assessment found that percentage of female and male students that participate in extra￾curricular activities is similar. 
Teacher Trainings
This report discusses teacher trainings, including the percentage of teachers who have received 
training in the last two years. The section also reports on teachers’ perception of the quality of those 
trainings. 
Health and Maternal & Child Health (MCH) 
Under Health and MCH, future evaluations will answer three research questions:
● What is the effect of deworming medicine on student attendance? 
● What is the effect of latrine and water access on student attendance, especially for girls? 
● Is there behavioral change in handwashing for students?
36
Deworming
To measure the effect of deworming medicine on attendance, the baseline assessment measured the 
percentage of schools that distribute deworming medicine, as reported by school directors. The 
baseline found that 36 percent of schools overall currently distribute deworming medication. However, 
a larger percentage of pilot schools (52%) than non-pilot schools (30.5%) distribute the medication
(Table 16). There is a risk of not being able to conclude whether the activities in the pilot schools are 
causing the higher performance of the pilot schools compared to the non-pilot ones since the pilot 
schools are already at an advantage. In that case, we will compare the pilot schools at baseline with 
values at midterm and at the end of the project. The evaluator will identify the various factors and 
conduct statistical analysis while taking into consideration confounding factors.
Table 16 Percentage of schools that distribute deworming medication
Measure
Total 
result Pilot
Non￾Pilot 
Difference/
Significant Brakna Gorgol
Difference/
Significant
% of schools where students 
received deworming medicine 
in the current school year
35.69 52 30.53 21.47/Yes 34.91 28.57 6.34/no
Attendance for schools with 
deworming 94.31 88.31 96.65 -8.34/N/A 92.49 91.6 0.89/N/A
Attendance for schools 
without deworming 88.95 92.44 88.39 4.05/N/A 96.09 82.44 13.65/N/A
Latrine and Water Access
A great majority of parents agreed in interviews that improved latrines would reduce their child’s 
school absences16. About 25 percent of parents disagreed. Parents who disagreed said that improved 
latrines would not increase attendance because their school already had good latrines. They also said
that their children would only use latrines at home or lived close enough to school that children could 
go home easily or use the latrines in homes that neighbor the school. 
Still, the baseline assessment found that at the time of the report, attendance was not higher for 
schools at which data collectors observed good latrines than schools that did not have good latrines. 
The data shows that attendance was slightly higher at schools without good latrines, but the difference 
was not significant. 
16 Schools were counted as having Improved Latrines if they had at least two latrines that were marked for boys and 
girls and were at least somewhat clean and well-maintained.
37
Table 17 Attendance at schools with and without good latrines
Measure Percent
Attendance with good latrine 88.57
Attendance without good latrine 91.24
Similarly, attendance did not differ at schools with or without a working water source. 
Table 148 Attendance at schools with a working water source
Measure Percent
Attendance with working water source at school 89.12
Attendance without working water source at school 90.75
The baseline assessment sought to understand students’ perspectives on the importance of well-maintained 
latrines and water sources. A relatively small percentage of boys and girls said that they miss school because of 
the latrines or quality of the water source. 
Table 19 Percentages of boys and girls that miss school because of latrine or water quality
Measure Percent
% girls reporting sometimes missing school because they don't like the latrines 8.84
% boys reporting sometimes missing school because they don't like the latrines 11.57
% girls reporting sometimes missing school because they don't want to drink the school water 9.04
% boys reporting sometimes missing school because they don't want to drink the school water 9.71
Handwashing
Handwashing behavior values are reported in section MGD SO2: Increased Use of Health, Nutrition, 
and Dietary Practices. 
Methodological Research Questions
The methodological questions included in the baseline assessment scope of work were:
• What is the best way to measure the three undefined McGovern-Dole outcome indicators 
(MGD 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3.2)? 
• How reliable is school and government-collected attendance and enrollment data? How can the 
accuracy be improved? 
Measuring MGD 1.1, 1.2, and 1.32
MGD 1.1: Improved Quality of Literacy Instruction - The baseline assessment took a baseline 
measurement to support future evaluations of MGD 1.1 by asking teachers:
• If they had received a training in the past two years.
• To rank the quality of that training. 
38
• To rank the quality of materials used in the training.
The percentage of teachers that received training in the past two years and their ranking of the quality 
of the training is found above. 
Future evaluations should consider comparing improvements in reading proficiency to improvements 
in teacher training and quality, controlling for other variables such as changes in the school’s feeding 
program, deworming medicine distribution, location, number of extra-curricular activities, and size to 
understand the effectiveness of teacher trainings. 
MGD 1.2: Improved Attentiveness - The baseline study asked teachers to estimate the number of 
times they had to refocus the class to take a measure of students’ attentiveness. 
Midterm and final evaluation could ask this question again, with additional questions that ask for
teachers’ and parents’ perception of changes in attentiveness since the project began. 
An objective measure of attentiveness, without investing time and resources into a sophisticated 
assessment methodology, remains elusive. The project could choose proxy indicators if it wished to 
track increases, like completeness of student assignments, or average grades on regularly taken tests. 
Tracking these indicators would also require time and resources. In lieu of a better alternative, teacher 
estimation of student attentiveness compared to data collected through interviews appears sufficient 
to measure improvement. 
MGD 1.3.2: Reduced Health Related Absences – The definition of MGD 1.3.2 is, Percentage of schools 
receiving USDA food security and health assistance which experience a decline in average student 
absenteeism. The baseline assessment has provided attendance rates for schools. 
The midterm and final evaluation will measure whether attendance has increased for schools that 
received USDA food security and health assistance. 
The baseline assessment also showed that attendance rates are already high at the project’s schools, 
but enrollment steadily declines as students’ progress from grades 1 to 6. Midterm and final 
evaluations should also measure changes in enrollment as schools receive USDA assistance. 
Reliability of Attendance and Enrollment Data
The baseline assessment found that attendance and enrollment data that schools and the government 
collect seemed fairly accurate. School directors also reported that they considered the data accurate. 
Directors said that occasionally teachers do not take attendance, especially if there are not enough 
teachers present on a given day, but that missing attendance happens relatively rarely. Regarding 
enrollment, school directors said that inaccuracies occur when students leave because the family has 
moved, the student enrolls in a different school, or students are accepted off the record (this happens 
if the student does not have a birth certificate). One director said that some enrolled students left his 
school to attend neighboring schools that have canteens and offer school materials. Most school 
directors consider their enrollment data accurate.
To ensure accuracy, the project should keep its own records of attendance and enrollment data. 
Project field staff should conduct regular, random headcounts at schools and compare the headcounts 
to attendance lists. The project should also compare enrollment numbers disaggregated by gender and 
grade to a list of eligible students in each school’s area of responsibility. Midterm and final evaluations 
39
should seek to understand the degree to which increases in enrollment reflect a net increase of 
students attending school or students leaving non-project schools to schools that participate in the 
project. 
Counterpart’s Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Director will design questionnaires for the 
field agent to collect the number of students currently benefiting from the project who do not have 
birth certificates. The birth certificate is an essential document for the First Leaving School Certificate 
in grade 6. They will collect this information from the school directors and teachers. Counterpart will 
also collect the number of school-age children (five to eight-years-old) who do have birth certificates in 
each of the 209 schools project zone. Counterpart will collect this information from the communes, 
chief of the villages, PTA/SMC, and other resources persons from the villages. This information will 
allow Counterpart to understand the magnitude of the problem. Counterpart will then work with 
organizations such as the Ministry of Social Affairs, Childhood, and Family, the Ministry of Education, 
Save the Children, and UNICEF to address this issue. Counterpart will perform this activity yearly 
beginning in FY22.
Table 19 Perception of attendance and enrollment data quality
Measure Total Pilot Non-Pilot Difference/Significant
% directors reporting attendance data is very 
accurate
96.24 97.44 95.96 1.45/no
% directors reporting enrollment data is very 
accurate
92.15 88.64 93..07 -4.43/no
% of teachers reporting taking attendance before 
every class 97.72 96.88 98.04 -1.16/no
School Feeding Sustainability
Research questions under sustainability include:
• What is the government capacity to manage school feeding at regional and national levels? 
• What commitment has the government shown regarding school feeding? (e.g. does it have a 
school feeding policy, clearly defined roles for managing school feeding, and plans to expand 
school feeding budget)?
40
Mauritania’s recently elected president has reportedly 
prioritized education, including school feeding. After years 
of the WFP leading the international community’s 
contribution to Mauritania’s school feeding programs, in 
2016, the GoM began leading its own school feeding 
program through its School Feeding Department. The
program has a budget of $700,000 USD per year since 
2019 and works in three regions. Whereas the WFP 
program focuses more on emergency relief, the 
government’s program focuses on school feeding
throughout the school year. In 2021, the government 
launched its national school feeding program and plans to 
expand the program to additional regions not covered by 
Counterpart and WFP, though it is not clear if the
government’s school feeding budget will also expand 
accordingly.
17 This program will reach 57,378 students in 
the regions of Hodh Charghi, Hodh Gharbi, Gorgol, Trarza, 
Adrar, Tagant, Dakhlet-Nouadhibou, Tiris-Zemmour, and 
Inchiri. The GoM school feeding program will include rice, 
beans, lentils, oil, and dry milk.
The government’s School Feeding Department has 36 staff at headquarters and two staff in each 
region. Staff feel they have learned important lessons on planning, distribution, and training from the 
WFP. The School Feeding Department expressed confidence in its capacity to manage the program but 
see shortcomings in monitoring and assessment capabilities and would like support to improve in this 
capacity. The department would also like to learn how to allocate scarce school feeding funding more 
effectively, and more generally learn from government-run school feeding programs in other countries. 
One of the government’s motivations for school feeding is to centralize the school system. 
Government officials observe that schools are spread too thin, and as a result, so are education 
resources. Through school feeding, the government hopes to make it more practical for children to 
come from further away to attend more centralized, better resourced schools. That school feeding 
programs provide incentive for students to travel further to attend school was confirmed by a director 
who said that his school’s enrollment data was not accurate because students left his school to attend 
a school with a school feeding program. 
17 The description of the GoM school feeding efforts and associated data obtained during interviews with government 
officials in support of the baseline assessment. 
Source: Counterpart International
41
4. Conclusions and Recommendations
Recommendations 
Promoting School Feeding Sustainability
Findings: The GoM is committed to 
promoting school feeding. The School 
Feeding Department reported that it 
would benefit from assistance with 
managing school feeding funding and 
monitoring and assessment of school 
feeding projects.
Recommendation 1: The GoM’s
expression of interest in receiving specific 
support in budget planning, monitoring, 
and assessment provides an opening for 
the Future is Ours! to build on the project’s 
sustainability. The project could work with 
the GoM in three ways to build the GoM’s 
capacity to manage school feeding and 
carry on the project’s activities after it 
ends. 
First, the project could assist the Department of School Feeding in working with other government 
departments and agencies to maximize the efficiency of government resources. USDA staff who
manage McGovern-Dole initiatives report that school feeding projects are more sustainable in 
countries that have effective communication and coordination across government ministries. Along 
these lines, The Future is Ours! could work with the Department of School Feeding to allocate its 
resources and to understand how those resources are complemented by other governmental 
initiatives. 
Second, the GoM expressed an interest in improving its monitoring and assessment capacity. An 
initiative to improve this capacity also offers an opportunity to connect central government initiatives 
with local government officials. The project could better align local government data collection and 
reporting with central government monitoring needs and create incentives that would reward local 
governments for regular, high-quality reporting. Such an initiative would improve central government’s 
monitoring and assessment. Importantly, it would also provide incentives for local government officials 
to increase their awareness of the project and their involvement in it. 
Third, the project could work with the GoM to promote initiatives that would tie the central 
government, local government, and communities together. For example, the project could work with 
the government and communities to create a school feeding challenge. The initiative could challenge 
local government officials and school communities to stretch school feeding budgets while maximizing 
nutritional value of school meals. The initiative could reward innovative ideas of practices and result in 
a conference attended by school directors and parents from high performing schools. 
Source: Counterpart International
42
Counterpart agrees with this recommendation. The GoM recently launched an important national 
school feeding program funded under the national budget for 5.5 million in 2021. The GoM already 
requested that Counterpart join the country strategic board which includes three important entities – 
the Ministry of Education, Food Security Commission, and General Delegation for National Solidarity 
and the Fight against Exclusion, known as Taazour. Counterpart will also: 
• Coordinate DNES staff to attend the WFP Cote d’Ivoire-based Center of Excellence Against 
Hunger and to take a course on building a national financial plan and budget. 
• Coordinate a regional peer-to-peer mentoring program with the Ministry of Education in 
Senegal. 
• Coordinate DNES participation in the annual Global Child Nutrition Forum (GCNF), which brings 
together virtually and physically actors in child nutrition to share best practices. Counterpart 
will also lead strategic exchange visits to Senegal. 
• Finally, to ensure the continuity of school canteens in the project area, Counterpart will 
organize a sustainability/ graduation workshop in FY21 (as per project workplan).
Measuring Project Performance
Findings:
• 13.3 percent more teachers at pilot schools than non-pilot schools had received a training in 
the last two years. 
• Teachers in pilot schools ranked the quality of their training higher than teachers at non-pilot 
schools. 
• Students at pilot schools were 7 percent more likely to say that they washed their hands with 
soap and water.
• 11.5 percent more pilot schools than non-pilot schools distribute deworming medication to 
their students, and schools with deworming medicine distribution had higher attendance than 
those without deworming medicine distribution. 
Recommendation 2: The baseline assessment found that pilot schools perform better than non-pilot 
schools in the quantity of training that teachers receive, the quality of that training, the degree to 
which students report washing their hands, and the distribution of deworming medication and 
correlated influence on attendance rates. The findings indicate that pilot schools have some advantage
over non-pilot schools in acquiring and using some resources efficiently. The project should take into 
consideration the advantages that pilot schools show at baseline when designing project activities and 
allocating resources. The midterm and final evaluations should measure overall improvement in these 
variables, and the distribution of that improvement to understand whether pilot schools’ evident 
advantage at baseline correlates with greater improvement than what is achieved at non-pilot schools. 
As mentioned above, future evaluations face a risk in measuring impact presented by the disadvantage 
that non-pilot schools face. The evaluator will compare pilot schools at midterm and end of the project
with results at baseline and will conduct statistical analysis while taking into consideration confounding 
factors.
43
Improved Literacy of School Aged Children
Finding: The designers of the EGRA suggest that students should be able to read 40 correct words per 
minute by the end of Grade 2: only 20 of 271 Arabic readers and 5 out of 291 French readers met this 
milestone. Most students are still learning to recognize letters and phonemes: we recommend setting 
a minimum proficiency level based on letter and phoneme recognition subtask. At baseline, 32.2 
percent of students assessed in Arabic and 9.6 percent of students tested in French could read 20 
letters per minute. 
Finding: Non-pilot school students were more proficient in Arabic than pilot school students by 19.2
percent. There was no significant difference in French proficiency between pilot school and non-pilot 
schools. 
Recommendation 3: The assessment team understands that the project prefers to keep the standards 
SO1 indicator to make sure that measurement is consistent across McGovern-Dole projects and to add 
an indicator tailored to measuring literacy improvements in the current The Future is Ours! project. The 
assessment team recommends that, in addition to the standard SO1 indicator, the project should add 
an indicator that would measure the percent of students who, by the end of two grades of primary 
schooling, can read 20 letters per minute. Defining success as the percentage of students who can read 
20 correct letters per minute puts the focus on the skills that the project will most likely improve over 
the course of the project. 
Recommendation 4: The baseline team recommends that, in its efforts to improve student literacy, the 
project should aim to increase the percentage of students who, at the end of second grade, can read 
20 letters per minute by 3 percentage points per year. This target is reasonable based on the low 
proficiency scores in both languages at baseline, but also the fact that a significant portion of students 
have learned to read some letters in both languages.
Recommendation 5: If the project has sufficient resources, it should research why the proficiency gap 
between pilot and non-pilot schools exists in Arabic but not French. The project should use the results 
to tailor its interventions accordingly. For instance, if the project discovers that non-pilot school 
students are more likely to speak Arabic at home than pilot school students, the project could 
emphasize Arabic reading materials in pilot schools’ extra-curricular reading activities. 
Counterpart suspects that most of the students from the non-pilot schools are originally from koranic 
schools (mahadras) as they are more remote than pilot schools. Nevertheless, Counterpart will confirm 
this assumption by conducting a survey on the origin of the students in both pilot and non-pilot 
schools. The 209 schools, including the 51 pilot schools, were selected among 400 schools in close 
collaboration with the GoM using the following criteria:
 Schools with six cycles/grades (completed cycles/ full-scale18) were prioritized but the Ministry 
highlighted that it is difficult to find 209 schools which meet this requirement especially in rural 
areas. Only 31 percent of primary schools in Mauritania are complete (full-scale) schools.
18 A complete/full cycle primary school is one with all six grades. 
44
 Schools that are close to local villages (1 to 2 kilometers). This increases enrollment of students 
and is in line with the Mauritania Government policy. 
 Engagement and active participation of the community toward the project.
 Schools accessible anytime for commodity transportation.
 Schools with infrastructure such as storerooms, latrines, and water sources.
 Schools with enrollment from 40 to more than 400 students.
Once the 209 schools were selected, Counterpart and the MOE chose the 51 pilot schools using the 
criteria below:
 Rural schools that are in proximity of 1 to 3 communes in one department of Brakna and 
Gorgol.
 Schools must have six grades with early grades 1, 2, 3 with one bilingual teacher and one 
classroom.
 The early grades 1, 2, and 3 have both French and Arabic ongoing literacy programs. The 
schools do not have multi-grade system (two grades in one classroom) or double vacation (one 
grade in the morning and the other one in the afternoon). 
 Teachers are fluent in both French and Arabic. 
 Engagement and active participation of the PTA toward the project to increase parental support 
for education and literacy.
 The SMC should be willing to sign a Memorandum of Understanding and engage actively in the 
pilot project.
Improved Quality of literacy instruction
Finding: Teachers reported that the trainings they had received were adequate and gave low ratings to 
the materials used. 
Recommendation 6: In interviews, teachers indicated that the trainings relied heavily on lecture and 
text. They also indicated they left trainings feeling that the lesson plans were not easily applied to their 
teaching environment. The project should ensure that trainings are dynamic and result in new skills 
and materials that teachers may transfer to their classroom. 
Improved Attentiveness
Finding: Teachers reported that they had to refocus their class three to four times per session. 
Recommendation 7: Attentiveness is difficult to measure accurately and inexpensively. The baseline 
assessment provided one measure, stated in the findings above. In addition to asking about refocusing 
class, midterm and final evaluations should gather other perceptions of increased attentiveness. These 
could include asking students, parents, and teachers whether they perceived an improvement in their 
students’ focus during class time. Future evaluations could also review records of the student 
assignment completeness or improvement in test grades. 
Recommendation 8: If the project has sufficient resources, it should conduct a special study into how 
school feeding projects influence student attentiveness. There are many ways to design student 
attentiveness studies, and the project should select one that best fits its resources and relationship 
with schools. One suggestion is to have project staff who regularly engage with schools to randomly 
45
select 2-3 classrooms per month for observation. The project staff member would then count the 
number of students who were actively listening to the teacher or engaged in the project activity in five￾minute intervals while the class was in session. The study should match data collected through these 
observations with the project’s school feeding data, schools’ demographic information, and qualitative 
data collected through interviews with students and teachers. The analysis would describe conditions 
under which school feeding projects improve student attentiveness. The analysis would be most 
meaningful if it could compare data collected at project schools to data from schools that do not have 
a school feeding project. While the project may not have access to schools that do not have school 
feeding projects, it should consider whether the government would be willing collect data at these 
schools to contribute to the study. The project should note that it is important in classroom 
observation studies to properly train classroom observers to ensure that the data is accurate and 
consistent. 
Improved Student Attendance and Enrollment
Finding: According to baseline data, schools have high attendance rates. 
Finding: Enrollment declines as grade progresses, with about 60 students per class in first grade 
dropping to around 44 students per class in sixth grade. 
Caveat: The baseline data in this area may require correction because of COVID-19 effects on school 
attendance and data collectors’ ability of to check school attendance data. 
Recommendation 9: The project should collect and track attendance data for all the schools 
participating in the project to ensure that measurement of the impact of activities on attendance is 
measured accurately. Project staff should also conduct random head counts of boys and girls once a 
month, and compare that count against the day’s attendance to assess the quality of the school’s 
attendance data. 
Recommendation 10: The project should work with schools to understand why enrollment drops as 
students’ progress through grades 1 – 6. Future evaluations should seek to measure if the school 
feeding project reduces the dropout rate at higher grade levels. 
Conclusion
There is ample room to improve the literacy of school-aged children in The Future is Ours! schools. The 
designers of the EGRA suggest that students should be able to read 40 correct words per minute by the 
end of grade two. At the time of the baseline assessment, only 20 of 271 Arabic readers and five 
French readers met this milestone. This suggests that, for the time spent in classrooms, students are 
not learning very efficiently. The qualitative and survey data can suggest what may be the key barriers 
to more efficient learning.
The baseline assessment results indicate that The Future is Ours! activities will increase learning 
efficiency. Stakeholders indicated that school feeding, improved literacy instruction, and associated 
activities will invigorate the learning process. The findings provided in this report will provide 
comparative data to measure the degree to which the project’s goals and related intermediary results 
are achieved. 
46
Annex 1: Key Indicators and Baseline Values
Result Indicator Operationalized for 
Baseline Total Pilot Non￾pilot
Difference/
Significant Male Female Difference/ 
Significant Brakna Gorgol Difference/ 
Significant
MGD SO1: 
Improved 
Literacy of 
School Aged 
Children
Percent of students who, 
by the end of two grades 
of primary schooling, 
demonstrate that they 
can read and understand 
the meaning of grade 
level text. 
Percentage of students 
who, by the end of two 
grades can read 20 
correct letters per minute.
French 8.1% 7.0% 8.3% -1.3%/no 7.9% 5.3% 2.6/no 6.5% 6.0% 0.5/no 
Arabic 35.0% 16.4% 37.5% -11.1%/no 35.9% 29.8% 6.1/no 33.3% 31.3% 2.0/no 
MGD 1.2: 
Improved 
Attentiveness 
Percent of teachers noting 
improved attentiveness in 
students participating in 
school feeding project. 
Number of times per class 
a teacher needs to take 
action to refocus class. 
3.38 3.37 3.39 -0.02/no 3.21 3.74 -0/53/no 
MGD 1.3: 
Improved 
Student 
Attendance19
Average student 
attendance rate in USDA 
supported 
classrooms/schools. 
Average attendance rates 
at USDA supported 
schools as recorded in 
government and school 
attendance records. 
Grade 1 90.31 89.09 90.65 -1.56/no 92.44 86.69 5.75/no 
Grade 2 92.33 90.08 92.97 -2.89/no 94.4 88.7 5.7/no 
Grade 3 90.99 89.27 91.48 -2.21/no 94.75 84.35 10.4/yes 
Grade 4 88.56 89.28 88.35 0.93/no 93.14 80.68 12.46/yes 
Grade 5 87.57 90.05 86.74 3.3/no 93 77.95 15.05yes 
Grade 6 89.22 93.53 88.01 5.51/no 94.45 80.45 14/yes 
Mean – All 
grades 90.8 90.24 90.96 -0.71/no 93.63 85.92 7.71yes 
19 Counterpart MEL team confirms that for the baseline enrollment data, we have 70122 students (34138 boys and 35984 girls). The attendance data are 
available at school level in each classroom.
47
Result Indicator Operationalized for 
Baseline Total Pilot Non￾pilot
Difference/
Significant Male Female Difference/ 
Significant Brakna Gorgol Difference/ 
Significant
MGD 1.3.4: 
Improved 
Student 
Enrolment
Number of students 
enrolled in school 
receiving USDA 
assistance. 
Mean number of students 
enrolled in school 
receiving USDA 
Grade 1 assistance. 64.2 60.52 65.17 -4.65/no 63.36 65.67 -2.31/no 
Grade 2 57.38 57.43 57.37 .006/no 53.88 63.46 -9.58/no 
Grade 3 55.89 55.47 56 -0.53/no 54.87 57.66 -2.79/no 
Grade 4 51.66 52.91 51.33 1.58/no 52.83 49.62 3.21/no 
Grade 5 44.8 50.36 43.35 7.01/no 45.85 42.98 2.87/no 
Grade 6 43.91 46.86 43.13 4.74/no 43.64 44.39 -0.75/no 
Mean – All 
Grades 317.85 323.57 316.35 7.22/no 314.43 323.77 -9.34/no 
MGD SO2: 
Increased Use 
of Health, 
Nutrition, and 
Dietary 
Practices
Number of beneficiaries 
who can demonstrate 
knowledge of effective 
health and hygiene 
practices because of USDA 
assistance. 
% of students washing 
hands with soap and 
water before eating and 
after using the latrine (at 
school). 
12.8 18.27 11.01 7.26/yes 13 12.66 1.34/no 13.46 11.63 1.83/no 
% washing hands with 
soap and water before 
eating and after using the 
latrine (at home). 
15.33 20.27 13.72 6.55/no 13.44 16.4 2.69/no 15.85 15.00 0.85/no 
48
Result Indicator Operationalized for 
Baseline Total Pilot Non￾pilot
Difference/
Significant Male Female Difference/ 
Significant Brakna Gorgol Difference/ 
Significant
MGD 2.4: 
Increased 
Access to 
Clean Water 
and 
Sanitation 
Services
Number of schools using 
an improved water 
source. 
% of schools with 
functional safe water 
source on property20. 
27.51 32.26 26.15 6.1/no 22.9 38.85 -15.95/no 
Number of schools with 
improved sanitary 
facilities. 
% of schools with 2 
marked latrines which are 
somewhat clean and well￾maintained, have a source 
of water for handwashing, 
and have soap.
17.33 11.76 19.15 -7.38/no 13 25.41 -12.41/no 
20 Note that many schools use water sources that are off school property. 
49
Annex 2: EGRA Validity
The baseline assessment used Chronbach's alpha statistics for each complete EGRA and the 
subtasks that made up each EGRA to test for reliability of the assessment data. Alpha statistics 
test whether item-level responses are internally consistent. For example, students who can
answer the first four reading questions correctly should be more likely to answer the fifth 
reading question correctly than students who got the first four wrong. Chronbach's alpha 
statistics are between 0 and 1. 
Table 20 Alpha ranges
Alpha Range21 Finding
0.0-0.6 Not Reliable
0.6-0.8 Reliable
0.8-1.0 Very Reliable
Table 21 presents that alpha statistics for the EGRA dataset. All Chronbach's alpha statistics are 
above 0.6, suggesting that the data are reliable. The lower reliability of the alpha statistic for 
the overall French score and the subtasks suggests that if a student’s skills are somewhat 
isolated within a given subtask, a student who scores high within one subtask may not be 
among the highest scorers on other subtasks. This underlines how different reading skills are. 
For example, students who did best at recognizing sound differences were not always the ones 
who read words most quickly. All the Chronbach's alpha scores remain well above the minimum 
acceptable threshold for validity. 
Table 21 Alpha statistics for the baseline dataset
Arabic French
# Items22 Alpha # Items Alpha
1. Sound Recognition 5 0.78 5 0.89
2. Phoneme Reading 100 0.90 100 0.97
3. Devised Words 50 0.88 50 0.97
4. Oral Reading Passage 72 0.97 97 0.97
5. Reading Comprehension 5 0.92 5 0.96
Overall 232 0.91 257 0.75
21 Source: Adhika, A. Improvement of Quality, Interest, Critical, and Analytical Thinking Ability of Students through the 
Application of Research Based Learning in Introduction to Stochastic Processes Subject International Electronic Journal of
Mathematics Education 12(2):167-191 22Number of items on assessment. Some items were collinear and therefore excluded from the alpha statistic 
calculation.
50
Annex 3: EGRA Explanation and Results
Section MGD SO1: Improved Literacy of School Aged Children describes the overall EGRA 
assessment results. This Annex provides the results three ways. First, it reviews scores 
according to each section of the EGRA, demonstrating the tasks that students could and could 
not perform. Second, the Annex presents overall scores using the EGRA Index, presenting
overall scores on the entire assessment and illustrating differences between subgroups, such as 
students in pilot and non-pilot schools, gender, and department. The third section provides an 
explanation of the baseline assessment’s proposed indicator for MGD1, which is defined as the 
percentage of students who reach a certain level of reading proficiency. It also describes 
proficiency levels by subgroups.
Scores by EGRA Section
Subtask Scores: French
The subtask scores show what preliteracy skills students possess. For example, in the first 
exercise, students were read three words out loud and asked which started with a different 
sound from the other two. Forty-three percent of students could not identify any of the 
differences; the average student completed 29 percent of the questions, or 1.5 out of the 5 
questions. 
Table 22 EGRA scores by task - French
Subtask Mean Score Units Percent of Zero Scores
1. Sound Recognition 29.0 Percent 43.0%
2. Phoneme Reading 5.8 Correct letters per minute 9.6%
3. Devised Words 0.7 Correct words per minute 82.2%
4. Oral Reading Passage 0.7 Correct words per minute 85.8%
5. Reading Comprehension 0.3 Percent 98.7%
When asked to read a list of letters and phonemes, only 9.6 percent of students could not
recognize any letters (91.4 percent could identify at least one). On average, students could 
recognize 5.8 letters in a minute. 
When given 60 seconds to read up to 50 devised words – that is, words that do not exist, but 
students could sound out, (such as nur, clo, and blu) – 82.2 percent of students could not sound 
out any words; 14.4 percent could sound out one to three words. On average, students could 
complete 0.7 words. 
When asked to read a short story out loud, students showed similar abilities as the devised 
words: 85.8 percent of students could not read any words; 12 percent could read one to five 
words. 
Only five of the students were able to read 10 or more words in the short story in a minute. 
The EGRA is based on a conceptual framework and evidence that students need to be able to 
read 40 words per minute or more to read for comprehension and sustain continual literacy 
51
improvement in future grades.23 Despite EGRA’s use globally and in multiple languages, this is 
based primarily on research completed in English in the U.S. and may not be universal. 
When asked to answer questions that would reveal comprehension of a short story, 98.7 
percent of the students could not answer any correctly. This is not a surprise given that the 
mean student read 0.7 words of the story correctly. Almost none of the students are reading 
words well enough to derive meaning from entire sentences.
Subtask Scores: Arabic
The Arabic literacy assessment showed greater student progress on many preliteracy skills than 
the French assessment. These scores may not imply greater learning in the classroom. Greater 
exposure to spoken and written Arabic and particularities of the language may make it easier 
for many students to develop these skills. Overall, the results follow a logical progression: on 
subtasks that require more complex skills, scores are lower and the percentage of students who 
cannot answer any correctly are higher. 
Table 15 EGRA scores by task - Arabic
Subtask Mean Score Units Percent of Zero Scores
1. Sound Recognition 43.1 Percent 30.1%
2. Phoneme Reading 13.1 Correct letters per minute 43.9%
3. Devised Words 4.4 Correct words per minute 53.8%
4. Oral Reading Passage 5.2 Correct words per minute 54.5%
5. Reading Comprehension 6.7 Percent 83.8%
The sound recognition score on the Arabic assessment was 43.1 percent, meaning students 
could hear the sound difference in 2.1 out of five questions on average. Just under one-third of 
students did not complete any of the sound recognition questions correctly. 
On average, students could read 13.1 letters or phonemes per minute. That average includes 
the 43.9 percent of students who could not read any letters or phonemes. Of the 56.1 percent 
of students who could read at least one letter, the average student could read 23.4 letters per 
minute. 
Students on average could read 4.4 devised words per minute. This is comprised of the 53.8 
percent of students who could not read any devised words, and the remainder who read at an 
average of 9.6 correct devised words per minute.
23 RTI International. 2016. EGRA Toolkit, Second Edition. Washington, DC: United States Agency for International 
Development. https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pa00m4tn.pdf
52
When reading the short story, 54.5 percent could not read any words. On average, students 
could read 5.2 correct words per minute. While higher than French levels, these are very low 
compared to Arabic readers in other countries. 
Given that approximately half of students cannot read any words in Arabic, it is not surprising 
that 83.8 percent of students cannot answer any of the comprehension questions. On average, 
students could answer 6.7 percent of comprehension questions. While this is higher than the 
comprehension levels of the French EGRA, it is very low after two years of schooling. 
EGRA Index24 
Group French Arabic
Overall 7.2% 18.7%
Pilot 7.7 18.4
Non-pilot 7.2 19.0
Female 7.5 17.7
Male 7.0 23.8
Brakna 7.0 9.0
Aleg 7.6 14.0
Babebe 7.0 13.7
Bogue 5.9 23.8
M'Bagne 10.1 20.0
Magtar Lahjar 5.7 21.0
Gorgol 7.7 13.7
Kaedi 7.9 22.6
M'bout 7.3 18.7
Mounguel 7.4 18.4
The numerical score of the EGRA index is useful to compare across subgroups and will be useful 
at future evaluation points to measure overall learning improvement. Despite considerable 
statistical power, there are no statistically significant differences in French EGRA index scores 
across gender, region, or department. This is likely due to the very low scores overall: half of 
the students answered five or fewer (of 257) questions correctly. 
The overall score on the EGRA index for all Arabic test takers is 18.7. While there is a slight 
difference in average scores across gender, it is not statistically significant. There is also no 
significant difference between the two regions, but considerable and statistically significant 
24 The table does not include departments that had small sample sizes. 
53
variation between departments. The most notable differences are the scores in Babebe, and 
M’Bout, which are substantially lower than the average. 
McGovern-Dole INDICATOR 1: Percent of students who, by the end of two grades of primary 
schooling, demonstrate that they can read and understand the meaning of grade level text.
According to the definition, “measures of the indicator will be determined in consultation with 
the country, and informed by national (or regional, if applicable) curriculum standards, and by 
international experience.” The indicator requires using the percentage of students who reach a 
minimum level of proficiency, instead of a mean score. It was not possible to acquire copies of 
Mauritania’s primary school curriculum or student standards, and unclear whether they reflect 
actual teaching in the schools. According to reports from enumerators, most students said they 
had only been taught letters, not to how to write words. 
With a paucity of external bases to define proficiency, we recommend allowing the data 
collected to guide the definition of proficiency. While the original sampling design assumed a 
much higher level of literacy, adjusting the definition of proficiency to focus on ability to read 
letters and phonemes instead of words more accurately reflects the level of ability that is likely 
to change over the course of the project.
The designers of the EGRA suggest that students should be able to read 40 correct words per 
minute by the end of grade two: only 20 of 271 Arabic readers and five French readers met this 
milestone. This suggests that, for the time spent in classrooms, students are not learning very 
efficiently. The qualitative and survey data can suggest what may be the key barriers to more 
efficient learning.
Most students are still learning to recognize letters and phonemes: we recommend setting a 
minimum proficiency level based on letter and phoneme recognition subtask. At baseline, 32.2 
percent of students assessed Arabic and 9.6 percent of students tested in French could read 20 
letters per minute. Defining success as the percentage of students who can read 20 correct 
letters per minute targets the skills most likely to reasonably be improved over the course of 
the project. 
Language
Zero Scores 
0 clpm
Not Proficient
1-9 clpm
Approaching 
Proficient
10-19 clpm
Proficient 
20 clpm+
Arabic 43.9% 12.1% 11.9% 32.2%
French 9.6% 76.6% 7.9% 5.9%
Arabic Subgroups
Subgroup Zero Scores 
0 clpm
Not Proficient
1-9 clpm
Approaching 
Proficient
10-19 clpm
Proficient 
20 clpm+
Non-pilot 42.9% 8.7% 12.0% 36.4%
Pilot* 47.1% 24.1% 11.5% 17.2%
Female 47.9% 11.1% 10.6% 30.4%
54
Male 39.6% 13.4% 33.7% 33.7%
Pilot schools show lower levels of Arabic proficiency than non-pilot schools at a statistically 
significant level. This is surprising, given that pilot schools were often selected due to being 
more accessible. Further analysis found significant differences even when controlling for 
ethnicity and language. Girls have slightly lower average Arabic proficiency, but not to a 
statistically significant degree.
Zero Scores 
0 clpm
Not Proficient
1-9 clpm
Approaching 
Proficient
10-19 clpm
Proficient 
20 clpm+
Brakna 44.4% 9.1% 12.2% 34.3%
Aleg 29.5% 1.7% 17.8% 51.1%
Babebe 68.9% 10.0% 6.7% 14.4%
Bogue 43.2% 19.4% 16.2% 21.2%
M'Bagne 57.0% 10.0% 5.0% 28.0%
Magtar Lahjar 41.7% 2.8% 8.3% 47.2%
Gorgol 42.8% 17.9% 11.2% 28.1%
Kaedi 49.0% 16.2% 10.3% 24.5%
M'bout 53.3% 6.7% 13.3% 26.7%
Mounguel 20.8% 29.2% 12.5% 37.5%
Although there are no statistically significant differences of proficiency between the two 
regions, there are statistically significant differences at the departmental level. The lowest 
levels of letter proficiency are found in Babebe, Bogue, M'bagne, and M'bout, which is in 
alignment with the findings on scores overall. Targeting schools in these departments may 
serve the greatest needs and are most likely to increase proficiency levels at future evaluation
points.
Ethnicity Zero Scores 
0 clpm
Not Proficient
1-9 clpm
Approaching 
Proficient
10-19 clpm
Proficient 
20 clpm+
Overall 43.9% 12.1% 11.9% 32.2%
Haratine 50.1% 13.1% 10.5% 26.3%
Beydane 24.7% 11.0% 12.4% 51.6%
Halpulaar 61.8% 9.1% 9.5% 19.6%
Fulani 56.8% 18.5% 24.7% 0.0%
Overall, ethnicity had a statistically significant difference on proficiency levels. Beydane 
students had higher levels of proficiency than all other ethnicities, followed by Haratine 
55
students. In the recommendations section, this report discusses the way midterm and final 
evaluations should manage the significant impact that ethnicity has on proficiency. 
French Subgroups
Unlike Arabic proficiency levels, French proficiency levels are not significantly higher in non￾pilot schools. Average letter recognition is slightly, but not significantly, lower in non-pilot 
schools than pilot schools, at 5.9 clpm and 5.7 clpm respectively. If scores in both languages 
were significantly higher in non-pilot, it may suggest that students learned better in one group
of schools or the other, but because the results are mixed by language, it suggests that other 
factors (such as language exposure) are the cause. This is helpful for future evaluations, as it 
means that future differences in improvement are more likely attributable to the project, and 
not some other differences endemic to the schools. There were no significant differences 
across gender (mean scores were within one thousandth of a percent of each other). 
Subgroup Zero Scores 
0 clpm
Not Proficient
1-9 clpm
Approaching 
Proficient
10-19 clpm
Proficient 
20 clpm+
Overall 9.6% 76.6% 7.9% 5.9%
Non-pilot 9.6% 77.1% 7.1% 6.1%
Pilot 9.6% 74.5% 10.6% 5.3%
Female 13.1% 74.5% 6.8% 5.6%
Male 7.0% 77.8% 9.3% 6.0%
French proficiency scores were not significantly different by region or department. None of the 
students assessed in French reported French as their primary language. This aligns with the 
hypothesis that Arabic scores vary by department primarily because of exposure to the 
language, not differences in learning at schools. Despite having overall lower levels of 
proficiency than the Arabic assessment, more students were able to read at least one letter. 
This again may be due to exposure to a Latin alphabet, or that Arabic letter recognition requires 
understanding cursive and isolate letters. It suggests overall that even though French 
proficiency levels are lower, students at baseline have begun on the path of recognizing letters
but are simply unable to do very quickly. This suggests there is a large group of students to 
focus on to bring from reading at 1-9 letters per minute into the 20 clpm proficiency range. 
Zero Scores 
0 clpm
Not Proficient
1-9 clpm
Approaching 
Proficient
10-19 clpm
Proficient 
20 clpm+
Brakna 9.1% 75.4% 9.6% 5.9%
Aleg 14.4% 59.6% 15.4% 10.6%
Babebe 5.2% 89.6% 0.0% 5.2%
Bogue 6.2% 85.5% 4.8% 3.5%
M'Bagne 0.0% 80.0% 10.5% 9.5%
56
Magtar Lahjar 12.5% 70.0% 12.5% 5.0%
Gorgol 10.67% 77.7% 5.8% 5.8%
Kaedi 6.8% 80.0% 8.1% 5.1%
M'bout 18.8% 68.8% 0.0% 12.5%
Mounguel 16.7% 79.2% 4.2% 0.0%
There are no statistically significant differences between ethnicities on French proficiency. 
There are minor variations in proficiency between ethnicities: most notably fewer zero scores 
among Halpulaar students, but ethnicity does not appear to be a significant determinant. 
Ethnicity Zero Scores 
0 clpm
Not Proficient
1-9 clpm
Approaching 
Proficient
10-19 clpm
Proficient 
20 clpm+
Haratine 13.7% 79.4% 4.2% 2.7%
Beydane 9.2% 70.7% 10.6% 9.5%
Halpulaar 3.1% 78.4% 10.9% 7.5%
Fulani 12.7% 78.4% 5.9% 2.9%
Targets
There appears ample and achievable improvement in literacy levels. Given a significant portion 
of both groups can read some letters, it is reasonable to assume a portion of students could 
move from not proficient to proficient. We recommend setting a target of increasing the 
proportion of students who can read 20 letters per minute 3 percentage points per year of 
project implementation. 
Language Proficient Target Improvement:
Arabic 32.2% +3% per annum 
French 5.9% +3% per annum 
While we recommend maintaining formal indicator targets only for the two languages, 
reporting and tracking proficiency levels by pilot and non-pilot schools will be pivotal to 
understanding how the two groups are affected by the project. Given the differences in 
proficiency levels at baseline, it will be important that future evaluations focus on improvement 
of proficiency over the baseline levels (such as the 3 percent per annum target), and not an 
expectation that all types of schools reach a single level of proficiency. 
Language Proficient
Arabic: Non-pilot 36.4%
Arabic Pilot 17.2%
French: Non-pilot 6.1%
French Pilot 5.3%
57
Annex 4: Baseline Assessment Scope of Work
Program Overview
The Future is Ours! will be implemented by Counterpart International along with its local 
partners EcoDev, ONG Actions, and regional partner, ARED.  The program will be implemented 
in phases with different cohorts of beneficiaries and treatments for each phase.  
Local partners EcoDev, ONG Actions, and ARED bring deep networks that anchor the evidence￾based set of program activities in local knowledge. Working in 209 schools, The Future is 
Ours! will link national level decision makers to local level school stakeholders by integrating 
improved student literacy and nutrition outcomes with school governance, engaging regional 
health and education actors, and building capacity of the MOE to improve the quality of 
primary schools. The program addresses the many challenges facing Mauritanian children and 
families by working through schools, communities, and government to strengthen institutions 
and change behaviors, both inside and outside the classroom.  The literacy activities will focus 
on grades 1- 3, with Arabic language instruction for grade 1 and Arabic and French for grades 2 
and 3, and school feeding and other activities for all the grades (1 to 6). 
Using best practices in EGRA, a pilot literacy project in 51 schools will test a holistic approach to 
improve student learning outcomes. This pilot is a component of a larger set of activities that 
contribute to intermediate and higher-level outcomes as mapped out in the Results Framework
in the next section.   
Results and Activities
Improved literacy of school aged children (SO 1) is to be achieved through a) improved quality 
of literacy instruction, b) greater student in-class concentration and c) increased attendance. 
Improved literacy will be achieved through improved access to school supplies and materials, 
improved literacy instruction materials and teachers’ attendance, and increased skill and 
knowledge of teachers and school administrators. Improved attentiveness will be achieved by 
increased access to food through school feeding. Improved student attendance and enrollment 
will result from increased access to food, reduced health-related absences, and improved 
school infrastructure. This pathway is illustrated in the results framework below. 
Policy results which support the implementation and sustainability of SO 1 are increased 
capacity of government institutions, improved policy and regulatory framework, increased 
government support, and increased engagement of local organizations and community groups. 
Increased use of health, nutrition, and dietary practices (SO 2) will be achieved through 
improved knowledge of health and hygiene practices; safe food preparation, storage, and 
nutrition; increased access to water and sanitation services; increased access to preventative 
health interventions; and increased access to food preparation and storage tools and 
equipment. The effectiveness and sustainability of SO 2 are supported by the same policy 
results as for SO 1. 
58
Results Framework for Improved Literacy of School Aged Children
59
Results Framework for Increased Use of Health, Nutrition and Dietary Practices
60
Beneficiaries 
The program will reach approximately 141,023 direct beneficiaries over the life of the project as 
follows: 
• 127,100 students in 209 primary schools
• 192 teachers/educators/assistants
• 209 school administrators
• 10,265 PTA, COGES, SMC, pregnant and lactating mothers, and cooks trained
• 3,247 children under five-years-old
• 10 government officials
Scope of Work
The awarded firm will work under the supervision of Counterpart International’s Program team 
based in Mauritania and the Washington D.C. area. The geographical focus of the program is 
on the Brakna and Gorgol regions in Mauritania. The firm is responsible for the quality of the 
data collection, data cleaning, analysis, and translation of findings into an accurate and high￾quality report. To successfully complete the baseline study, the awarded firm must complete 
the following tasks:
• Operationalize research questions and indicators. Of special interest is the effectiveness 
of teacher trainings, as well as the research questions on sustainability that will be 
assessed in terms of government support and capacity. 
• Conduct a survey to collect high quality data from treatment and control schools to 
provide baseline values for the research questions and for program indicators. Data 
quality is to be ensured through data logic consistency checks and validation rules, as 
well as ongoing monitoring of data collected during the survey. Key aspects of fieldwork 
include the following tasks:
o Identifying control schools
o Operationalizing research questions for measurement 
• Produce a baseline report containing a) descriptive statistics of baseline values 
including, where appropriate, disaggregated by gender, department, and grade and b) In 
addition to the descriptive statistics, the report will include recommendations on 
methodology for implementing subsequent evaluations.
The firm will also provide Counterpart with all data sets in both original and final (cleaned) 
version used for analysis. The firm will also provide all tools used as well as a survey manual 
that will inform survey implementation for subsequent evaluations.
Do No Harm 
Counterpart International works on the assumption that ethics comes before evidence, in line 
with the principles of ‘Do No Harm,” ensuring that any kind of intervention does not 
inadvertently or in any way do harm or worsen the situation. It is essential that any interaction 
and work carried out as part of this evaluation do not in any way negatively impact the 
61
individuals or communities involved. It is critical that during data collection the psychological 
impact of the research on participants is considered, as well as their physical security.
Research Questions
The following research questions will be answered cumulatively by the midterm, final, and 
impact evaluations. The baseline study therefore must assess the baseline status of these 
questions. The awardee will be responsible for operationalizing these research questions so 
that they can be consistently and accurately measured in subsequent evaluations. The 
operationalization of the research questions will be informed by review of similar evaluations 
and research, including other McGovern-Dole evaluations. 
McGovern-Dole Project Level Performance 
• Have program outputs and outcome targets been achieved? (see “McGovern-Dole
Outcome Indicators that Require Baseline Values” table below) 
School Feeding and Nutrition 
• What is the effect of school feeding on attendance, enrollment, and attention? 
• What is the interaction between school feeding and improved hygiene practices?
Education and Literacy
• How effective are reading-oriented extra-curricular activities in improving literacy? 
• How effective are teacher trainings? 
Health and MCH
• What is the effect of deworming medicine on student attendance? 
• What is the effect of latrine and water access on student attendance, especially for 
girls? 
• Is there behavioral change in handwashing for students?
Methodology 
• What is the best way to measure the three undefined McGovern-Dole outcome 
indicators (MGD 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3.2)? 
• How reliable is school and government-collected attendance and enrollment data? How 
can the accuracy be improved? 
School Feeding Sustainability
• What is the government capacity to manage school feeding at regional and national 
levels? 
• What commitment has the government shown regarding school feeding? (e.g., do they 
have a school feeding policy, clearly defined roles for managing school feeding, and
plans to expand school feeding budget)?
62
McGovern-Dole Outcome Indicators that Require Baseline Values 
Result # Title in Result Framework Indicator
MGD 
SO1
Improved Literacy of School 
Aged Children 
Percent of students who, by the end of two grades of 
primary schooling, demonstrate that they can read and 
understand the meaning of grade level text
MGD 
1.1
Improved Quality of Literacy 
Instruction
Number of schools whose teachers receive training 
and/or assistance to improve literacy instruction
MGD 
1.2
Improved Attentiveness Percent of teachers noting improved attentiveness in 
students participating in school feeding program
MGD 
1.3 
Improved Student Attendance Average student attendance rate in USDA supported 
classrooms/schools
MGD 
1.3.2
Reduced Health-Related 
Absences
Percentage of schools receiving USDA food security and 
health assistance which experience a decline in average 
student absenteeism
MGD 
1.3.4
Improved Student Enrollment Number of students enrolled in school receiving USDA 
assistance 
MGD 
2.4
Increased Access to Clean 
Water and Sanitation Services 
Number of schools using an improved water source
Number of schools with improved sanitary facilities 
MGD 
S02
Increased Use of Health, 
Nutrition, and Dietary 
Practices
Number of individuals who demonstrate use of safe food 
preparation and storage practices because of USDA 
assistance
Approach and Methodology
Design Overview
The consultant will collect data from a statistically representative sample of the 209 schools. 
The survey will include treatment and control schools. Treatment schools will be those where 
the program is implemented while control schools will be the ones outside of the program 
implementation area for both the literacy and school feeding components. The impact 
evaluation will compare impact on two aspects:
• On the literacy component, we shall compare 51 schools that benefit from literacy
programming to schools that will not benefit from the literacy intervention. The literacy 
component will only be implemented in Brakna and Gorgol.
• On the school feeding component, we will compare schools that receive school meals to 
schools in the region that do not benefit from the project.
The awardee will select control schools using the same criteria used for choosing treatment 
schools. The criteria will be discussed with the selected evaluator. 
Within sampled schools, interviews will be conducted with students, directors, teachers, and 
parents. The program seeks to identify any barriers that can hinder the success of the program 
or windows of opportunity that can be used to advance the goals. Additionally, will identify any 
behaviors, attitudes, perceptions among the education stakeholders e.g., teachers, directors, 
and parents to develop appropriate behavioral communication materials and messages. In 
63
addition, interviews will be conducted with government officials to assess capacity and 
commitment for sustainability.
Document Review
Documents to be reviewed as part of the baseline study include the evaluation plan, the 
performance monitoring plan, the work plan, the proposal, and the USDA Monitoring and 
Evaluation policy, as well as baseline studies and evaluations for other MGD projects. 
Pilot Survey
The awardee is required to conduct a pilot survey to test all questionnaires. The pilot is especially 
important because questions phrasing will be used for the subsequent evaluations and must elicit 
accurate responses. Sufficient time must be allocated for updating all instruments based on pilot 
findings. The local languages in which each data collection instrument should be fielded is Arabic 
and French.
Survey Sampling 
The proposed sampling strategy should produce a minimal detectable effect size for the results 
of the student survey of 0.2, which is consistent with best practices. The evaluator will 
randomly select McGovern-Dole schools from the 209 participating in the project. The control 
sample will include randomly selected schools from those that match McGovern-Dole
participation criteria, but which are not participating. This anticipated treatment to control 
school ratio is anticipated to be 60:40.
Within each sample school the evaluator will also survey teachers, including one Head Teacher, 
as well as one director. The observation tool will be used in McGovern-Dole schools and control 
schools. Parents’ perceptions of changes in their children related to McGovern-Dole can be best 
assessed through qualitative interviews or focus groups. 
An illustrative sample for each survey is shown below and will be finalized in collaboration with 
USDA and Counterpart:
Table: Proposed baseline sample size for SSME 
and EGRA Stakeholder 
McGovern￾Dole
(Treatment) 
Control Total 
All Students grades 1-6 (x 9) 972 648 1,620 
EGRA only students grades 1-3 (x 6) 648 432 1,080 
Teachers including Head Teachers (x 3) 324 216 540 
Directors (x 1) 108 72 180 
Observation tool 108 72 180 
In addition, Counterpart and the MOE team have agreed to the school selection criteria below.
i. School with six (completed cycles/ full-scale) cycles/grades will be prioritized but the 
Ministry highlighted that it is difficult to find 209 school which meet this requirement, 
especially in rural areas. Only 31 percent of primary schools in Mauritania are complete 
(full-scale) schools.
64
ii. Schools that are in proximity of least 1 to 2 kilometers to local villages. This increases 
enrollment of students in that locality and is in line with the Mauritania Government 
policy. 
iii. Engagement and active participation of the community toward the project.
iv. Schools shall be accessible anytime for commodity transportation.
v. Schools will have infrastructure such as storerooms, latrines, and water sources.
vi. Schools with enrollment from 40 to more than 400 students.
Reading Tools
The evaluations will use EGRA methodologies. EGRA is another reading assessment tool that 
has been used with McGovern-Dole evaluations in other countries. A baseline EGRA and 
Snapshot of School Management and Effectiveness (SSME) survey will inform the design of 
materials, teacher training, and community mobilization activities. The evaluator will be 
responsible for developing the tools and submit to Counterpart for approval.
Data Analysis
The local data collection firm is responsible for entering all data collected under this evaluation. 
This includes double entry of all survey data. Survey data must be entered in Excel 
files. Supervisor(s) will conduct thorough data checks and submit to Counterpart a final, clean 
dataset. The data collection firm will also prepare and deliver a codebook to accompany the 
final dataset. Survey data analysis will be carried out using an appropriate statistical package 
such as R or Stata. Analysis will include means and means comparisons by gender, grade, and 
department, along with tests of statistical significance. 
** Firms with capacity to collect data using tablets or smart phones are encouraged to propose 
conducting electronic data entry using tools such as ODK, KoboToolbox, or others. While using 
electronic data collection, the firm must explain the methodology of programming/testing 
surveys, cleaning, and submitting electronic data. Counterpart will procure tablets (Androids 
2.1 with sufficient memory) for data collection.
Assignment Timeline, Place of Performance, and Other Conditions. 
Counterpart anticipates the preparatory work and review of relevant reports and documents to 
be completed according to the deadlines presented below.
The first draft of the baseline evaluation report is due to Counterpart on or about January 5, 
2021. Once the draft is submitted, Counterpart will have seven business days to review the 
report, raise concerns, provide comments, and send it back to the evaluator. The evaluator will 
then address Counterpart’s comments and concerns and submit a revised report to 
Counterpart for Counterpart and the donor’s review. The final version of the report is due no 
later than January 31, 2021 and should include a 2-3-page stand-alone brief describing the 
evaluation design, key findings, and other relevant considerations. It will serve to inform any 
interested stakeholders of the baseline evaluation and should be written in language easy to 
understand by non-evaluators and with appropriate graphics and tables. Should Counterpart 
still not be satisfied with the quality of the final baseline report, then both Counterpart and the 
evaluator will negotiate a no-cost extension to ensure both parties are satisfied with the result.
65
If some project activities just started or started concurrently with baseline data collection, we 
ask that the evaluators carefully document in their report these circumstances, explaining how 
much exposure to project activities the sampled participants have had and what effect on 
baseline numbers the evaluators predict this exposure has had.
Throughout the baseline evaluation, there must be open communication between the 
evaluator and Counterpart through phone calls, emails, text messages, Skype calls, or face-to￾face meetings for effective coordination between both parties and to ensure that potential 
issues are resolved in a timely manner. Any anticipated changes to the plan during the 
evaluation must be submitted in writing and be approved by Counterpart. 
The timeline below assumes that travel restrictions will be lifted by end of May, but the global 
health situation is currently fluid, and restrictions may be in place for a longer, unknown period. 
Figure: Tentative workplan
Phase I
April￾September 
2020
Phase II
October￾November 
2020
Phase III
November
2020-
January 
2021
Kick-off meeting – April
Desk Review- April-May
Development of tools and evaluation matrix- May-June
Development and Submission of Baseline Evaluation Workplan-June-July 
Finalization of tools and translation in French and Arabic- August-September 
Preparation for field visit-September 
In-Country Baseline workshop in Nouakchott with Counterpart and program 
staff-beginning of October 
Training of data collectors in Nouakchott- beginning of October
Piloting of Tools in Brakna and/or Gorgol - beginning of October
In-country data collection-October-early November 
Presentation of preliminary findings -early November
Analysis-November
Debriefing of Preliminary findings at Counterpart’s HQ-November 
Preparation and submission of first draft of baseline report to Counterpart -
early December 
Incorporation of feedback and submission of second draft report to USDA for 
review-December before holidays 
Finalization and submission of Baseline Evaluation Report-early January 
Submission of data sets and survey manual and tools- early January 
IMC Counterpart 
International
 Deliverable
66
Staff Structure
The evaluation team will comprise one international program evaluator (Team Leader), an 
Associate consultant, and two or more local or international consultants or members of a 
consulting firm selected for their technical expertise. To the extent possible, the evaluation 
team will be gender balanced.
Deliverables
The awardee will be responsible for the six deliverables below. 
1. Inception report: Before starting fieldwork, the awardee will submit an inception report 
for approval by Counterpart. The inception report will contain a plan for fieldwork with 
a description and schedule for all activities. It will also include all tools to be used for 
data collection, including questionnaires. 
2. In-country debrief: Before the fieldwork is completed, the awardee will complete a 
debrief with Counterpart team in Mauritania. The debrief presentation will cover what 
changes were made to questions based on the pilot, if there were any survey 
challenges, and preliminary findings.
3. Draft evaluation report: The report shall contain the following sections: 1) Introduction, 
2) Methodology, 3) Results, and 4) Recommendations. The Results section will include 
both summary baseline values as well as description of qualitative results. The 
Recommendations will be both a) programmatic, based on relevant results and b) 
methodological for the subsequent evaluations. The report should detail and justify how 
key indicators and research questions were operationalized and measured. 
4. Presentation to field and HQ staff: The awardee will prepare a PowerPoint presentation 
of the draft evaluation report and present it to Counterpart U.S. and field staff. 
5. Datasets, tools, and survey manual: All datasets (should be cleaned up) and tools will be 
shared with Counterpart. Additionally, a survey manual explaining how the survey/s 
were carried out will be provided. 
6. Final report: The final report will incorporate written feedback and comments from the 
presentation. It should not exceed 40 pages, exclusive of annexes. The report should 
also include a 2-3-page stand-alone brief describing the evaluation design, key findings,
and other relevant considerations. It will serve to inform any interested stakeholders of 
the baseline evaluation and should be written in language easy to understand by non￾evaluators and with appropriate graphics and tables.
The following table outlines requirements for the Final Baseline Report:
Report Length Maximum of 40 pages, excluding the Table of Contents, Acronym List, and 
Annexes and should be written in Times New Roman font size 12. 
Illustrative Report 
Outline
Acknowledgement
Table of Contents
Table of Exhibits
Acronym List
Executive Summary (in English and French)
67
Chapter 1. Evaluation Purpose and Research Questions
Chapter 2. Project Background
Chapter 3. Evaluation Method
3.1 Methodologies
3.2 Sampling Framework
3.3 Data Sources and Data Collection Methods
3.4 Field Work
3.5 Analysis Plan
3.6 Strengths and Limitations
Chapter 4. Findings
Chapter 5. Conclusion and Recommendations
5.1 Summary of Key Findings
5.2 Lessons Learned
 5.3 Recommendations
References
Annexes
Executive Summary Include an Executive Summary that provides a brief overview of the evaluation 
purpose, project background, evaluation questions, methods, findings, and 
conclusions.
Questions Address all evaluation questions in the Scope of Work.
Methods • Explain evaluation methodology in detail.
• Disclose evaluation limitations, especially those associated with the 
evaluation methodology (e.g., selection bias, recall bias, etc.).
NOTE: A summary of methodology can be included in the body of the report, with 
the full description provided as an annex.
Findings • Tables with baseline results, disaggregated by gender, department, 
grade and/or pre-school, as appropriate. 
• Brief description of each table, including any context or explanation 
needed to aid the reader in interpreting and understanding. 
• Detailed description of findings for methodological research questions 
and operationalizing of key indicators as described in the Scope of Work.
Recommendations • Support recommendations with specific findings.
• Provide recommendations that are action-oriented, practical, and 
specific.
Annexes Include the following as Annexes, at a minimum:
• Terms of Reference. 
• All evaluation tools (questionnaires, checklists, discussion guides, 
surveys, etc.).
• A list of sources of information (key informants, documents reviewed, 
other data sources). 
Only if applicable, include as an annex Statement(s) of Differences regarding any 
significant unresolved differences of opinion on the part of funders, 
implementers, and/or members of the evaluation team. 
68
All final versions of international food assistance evaluation reports will be made 
publicly available. Evaluators shall provide a copy of the evaluation report that is 
free of personally identifiable information (PII) and proprietary 
information. Final versions of evaluation reports ready for publication should be
accessible to persons with disabilities. For guidance on creating documents 
accessible to persons with disabilities, please see the following resources: 
https://www.section508.gov/create/documents; 
https://www.section508.gov/create/pdfs”
Quality Control Assess reports for quality by including an in-house peer technical review with 
comments provided to the evaluator.
Transparency An English report should be submitted in an electronic version to Counterpart for 
approval.
All deliverables must be approved by Counterpart
Roles and Responsibilities
The evaluator will be responsible for all the deliverables listed in the Term of Reference and will 
be free to draw their own conclusions free from political or organizational pressure. The 
evaluator will coordinate with Counterpart staff including Senior Program Manager, Program 
Officer, Director of Program Evaluation and Learning, and Counterpart Mauritania Chief of Party 
with regards to the overall scope, direction, and completion of this assignment. USDA will 
provide guidance as needed along with feedback on the initial draft, to be included in the final 
report. USDA will also be consulted as a key informant prior to evaluation fieldwork.
Counterpart staff will provide all relevant reports, data, and related information necessary to 
prepare the evaluator for the assignment. And as needed, Counterpart staff will facilitate field 
logistics, including potential meetings with all relevant stakeholders during the field visit in 
Mauritania. The U.S. point of contact will be the Senior Program Manager while the in-country 
point of contact will be the Chief of Party. Counterpart HQ Senior Program Manager is 
responsible for approving evaluation deliverables.
69
Annex 5: Data Collection Instruments
70
Student Survey Tool
Question # Question name Question Responses Note to interviewer Logic 
starttime Start time Automatic
startdate Start date Automatic
note
You have been selected to 
participate in a survey on health, 
nutrition and education as part of 
the The Future is Ours! project. 
Your participation in this study is 
entirely voluntary. You are under 
no obligation to participate. You 
have the right to refuse to answer 
questions and to withdraw from 
the study at any time. If you 
agree, please answer all questions 
as honestly as possible. If you are 
unable to answer one of the 
questions, you can ignore the 
question. All your answers are 
strictly confidential.
consent
Ask for the respondents consent. If 
the person agrees, continue the 
interview. Yes
No
interviewer_name Interviewer name Multiple choice tbd
device_id deviceid
region Region Brakna
Gorgol
school_type What type of school is this? MGD Pilot school
MGD non-pilot school
Control school
department Department Aleg If region = Brakna, show 
Bababe
Bouge
M'Bagne
Magtar Lahjar
Kaedi If region = Gorgol, show 
M'Bout
Maghama
Monguel
municipality Municipality Multiple choice tbd
school Name of school Multiple choice tbd
grade What is the grade of the student? 1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
gender What is the gender of the student? 1. Male
2. Female
language
What language do you speak most 
of the time at home? 1. Arabic
2. French
3. Berber
4. Other (specify)
food_where
Where do you eat when you're at 
school? 1. School canteen
2. Buy food from nearby
3. Go home to eat
4. Other (specify)
food_quality
Do you like the food you eat during 
school?
1. Yes
2. No
food_absence Do you ever miss school to eat? 1. Yes
2. No
food_absence_why
Why do you miss school to eat? 1. Comes late after breakfast 
at home
2. Goes home for lunch and 
doesn't come back
3. Other (specify)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
71
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
water_where
Where do you get water from to 
drink during school? 1. From school multiple choice
2. From home
3. From nearby the school
4. I buy bottled water
5. I don't drink water during 
school
water_quality
What do you think about the school 
water quality? 1. It's good if water_where==1
2. It's not good
water_quality_why Why isn't the water good? 1. Bad taste if water_quality==2
2. Water is dirty
3. Water area is not clean
4. Water is not reliable / not 
available all the time
5. Other (specify)
water_absence
Do you ever miss school because 
you don't want to drink the school 
water? 1. Yes
2. No
washhands
How many times per day do you 
wash your hands at school?
Enter "0" if they do not 
wash hands
washhands_not
Why don't you usually wash you're 
hands at school?
1. There is no place to wash 
hands multiple choice if washhands==0
2. There is no water
3. There is no soap
4. the wash basin isn't clean
washhands_when
When do you usually wash your 
hands when you're at school? 1 Before eating multiple choice if washhands>0
2 Before touching or 
preparing food
3 Before giving food to 
someone else
4 When I have dirt on my 
hands
5 After touching something 
dirty
6 After touching an animal
7 After using the latrine
8 Other (Specify)
washhands_what
What do you usually wash your 
hands with when you're at school? 1 Water multiple choice if washhands>0
2 Ashes
3 Sand
4 Soap
5 Other (specify)
washhandshome
How many times per day do you 
wash your hands at home?
washhandshome_not
Why don't you wash your hands at 
home?
1. There is no place to wash 
hands multiple choice if washhandshome==0
2. There is no water
3. There is no soap
4. the wash basin isn't clean
5. Other (specify)
washhandshome_when
When do you usually wash your 
hands when you're at home? 1 Before eating multiple choice if washandshome>0
2 Before touching or 
preparing food
3 Before giving food to 
someone else
4 When you have earth on 
your hands
5 After touching something 
dirty
6 After touching an animal
7 After using the latrine
8. After changing clothes
9 Other (Specify)
washhandshome_what
What do you usually wash your 
hands with when you're at home? 1 Water multiple choice if washandshome>0
2 Ashes
3 Sand
4 Soap
5 Other (specify)
2. Bad color/not clean
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
72
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
latrines
Are you comfortable using the 
school latrines? 1. I am comfortable using them
2. I am not comfortable using 
them
3. There is no latrine at this 
school
latrines_comfort
Why aren't you comfortable using 
the school latrines? 1. They are not clean multiple choice if latrines==2
2. I don't feel like I have 
privacy
3. There is not place to wash 
my hands
4. They are not safe
5. Other (specify)
latrines_absense
Do you ever miss school because 
you don't want to use the school 
latrine? 1. Yes
2. No
extracurricular
Did you participate in any 
extracurricular reading activities at 
school this past school year? 1. Yes
2. No
extracurricular_what What kind of activities? 1. I had a private tutor
2. Small class with teacher or 
tutor
3. Other (specify)
extracurricular_reason
Why not? 1. Not offered at my 
school/not aware If extracurricular = 2
2. Don't have time/not allowed
3. Don't want to/not 
interested
4. Other
73
absence
How many days did you not go to 
school last semester? <100
absence_reason
What was the main reason you 
missed school last semester? 1. I was sick if absense !=0
2. Someone in my family was 
sick
3. I needed to work on the 
farm
4. I needed to do other work Missing
5. The latrine facilities at 
school are not good 
6. Other (specify)
leave
How many days did you leave early 
or come late last semester? <100
leave_reason
What is the the main reason for 
coming late or leaving early? 1. I was sick 
2. Someone in my family was 
sick
3. I needed to work on the 
farm
4. I needed to do other work
5. I needed to eat at home
6. I needed water
7. The latrine facilities at 
school are not good 
8. Other (specify)
attention
How easy is it for you to pay 
attention to your teacher in class?
1. Very Easy
2. Easy
3. Hard
4. Very hard
attention_reason
Why is it hard to pay attention? Write down the students 
response If attention>2
geopoint
Geopoint
GPS_location
Please take the GPS 
coordinates of the 
interview location.
endtime
Interview end time Thank the student for their 
time and end the 
interview.
74
Teacher Survey Tool
Question # Question name Question Responses Note to interviewer Logic 
starttime Start time Automatic
startdate Start date Automatic
note
You have been selected to 
participate in a survey on health, 
nutrition and education as part of 
the The Future is Ours! project. 
Your participation in this study is 
entirely voluntary. You are under 
no obligation to participate. You 
have the right to refuse to answer 
questions and to withdraw from 
the study at any time. If you 
agree, please answer all questions 
as honestly as possible. If you are 
unable to answer one of the 
questions, you can ignore the 
question. All your answers are 
strictly confidential.
consent
Ask for the respondents consent. If 
the person agrees, continue the 
interview. Yes
No
interviewer_name Interviewer name Multiple choice tbd
device_id deviceid
region Region Brakna
Gorgol
school_type What type of school is this? MGD Pilot school
MGD non-pilot school
Control school
department Department Aleg If region = Brakna, show 
Bababe
Bouge
M'Bagne
Magtar Lahjar
Kaedi If region = Gorgol, show 
M'Bout
Maghama
Monguel
municipality Municipality Multiple choice tbd
school Name of school Multiple choice tbd
grade
What grades does the teacher 
teach? 1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
gender What is the gender of the teacher? 1. Male
2. Female
languageschool
What languages do you teach in at 
school? 1. Arabic multiple choice
2. French
3. Berber
4. Other (specify)
languagehome
What language do you speak most 
of the time at home? 1. Arabic multiple choice
2. French
3. Berber
4. Other (specify)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
75
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
attention
In an average class this semester, 
how many times do you have to 
interrupt class to refocus distracted 
students?
trainedwell
On a scale of 1 (not well trained) to 
5 (very well trained), how well 
trained do you feel to deliver your 
classes? 1. One (not well trained)
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five (very well trained)
traininglast
When was the last literacy related 
training you received? 1. This semester
2. Last semester
3. 1 to 2 years ago
4. Over two years ago
5. Never
trainingwho Who provided this training? text
attendence
Do you take attendence before 
every class? 1. Yes
2. No
attendence_how
How often do you give attendance 
data to the school director? 1. Every day
2. Every week
3. Every month
4. Other (specify)
geopoint Geopoint GPS_location
Please take the GPS 
coordinates of the 
interview location.
endtime Interview end time
Thank the teacher for their 
time and end the 
interview.
76
Director Checklist Tool
Question # Question name Question Responses Note to interviewer Logic 
starttime Start time Automatic
startdate Start date Automatic
note
You have been selected to participate in 
a survey on health, nutrition and 
education as part of the The Future is 
Ours! project. Your participation in this 
study is entirely voluntary. You are 
under no obligation to participate. You 
have the right to refuse to answer 
questions and to withdraw from the 
study at any time. If you agree, please 
answer all questions as honestly as 
possible. If you are unable to answer 
one of the questions, you can ignore the 
question. All your answers are strictly 
confidential.
consent
Ask for the respondents consent. If the 
person agrees, continue the interview. Yes
No
interviewer_name Interviewer name Multiple choice tbd
device_id deviceid
region Region Brakna
Gorgol
school_type What type of school is this? 1. MGD Pilot school
2. MGD non-pilot school
3. Control school
department Department Aleg If region = Brakna, show 
Bababe
Bouge
M'Bagne
Magtar Lahjar
Kaedi If region = Gorgol, show 
M'Bout
Maghama
Monguel
municipality Municipality Multiple choice tbd
school Name of school Multiple choice tbd
grade What grades are at this schoool? 1st multiple choice
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
gender What is the gender of the director? 1. Male
2. Female
feeding
Do you have a school feeding program at 
your school? 1. Yes
2. No
feeding_cooks
Currently, how many cooks are there in 
your school feeding program? numeric if feeding==1
feeding_cookstraining
In the past year, how many of these have 
been trained AND are practicing new safe 
food preperation practices? numeric mark zero for none if feeding==1
feeding_management
Currently and including yourself, how 
many people are involved in managing 
school commodities? numeric if feeding==1
feeding_managementtrain
In the past year, how many of these 
people were trained in AND are practicing 
new safe food storage practices? numeric if feeding==1
deworming
Did students at your school receive 
deworming medicine from the 
government during the current school 
year? 1. Yes
2. No
note1
Tell the director you will ask about 
enrollment and attendence data for last 
year and this year
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
77
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
y y
enrollment2019_yn
Do you have enrollment data from 
2019/2020? 1. Yes
2. No
enrollment2019
What the enrollment rate for grades 1- 6 
for the 2019/2020 school year? if enrollment2019_yn==1
enrollment2019_1 grade 1 if enrollment2019_yn==1
enrollment2019_2 grade 2 if enrollment2019_yn==1
enrollment2019_3 grade 3 if enrollment2019_yn==1
enrollment2019_4 grade 4 if enrollment2019_yn==1
enrollment2019_5 grade 5 if enrollment2019_yn==1
enrollment2019_6 grade 6 if enrollment2019_yn==1
enrollment2020_yn
Do you have enrollment data from the 
2020/2021 school year? 1. Yes
2. No
enrollment2020
What the enrollment rate for grades 1- 6 
for the 2020/2021 school year? if enrollment2020_yn==1
enrollment2020_1 grade 1 if enrollment2020_yn==1
enrollment2020_2 grade 2 if enrollment2020_yn==1
enrollment2020_3 grade 3 if enrollment2020_yn==1
enrollment2020_4 grade 4 if enrollment2020_yn==1
enrollment2020_5 grade 5 if enrollment2020_yn==1
enrollment2020_6 grade 6 if enrollment2020_yn==1
enrollmenthow How do you collect enrollment data? write down text response
enrollmentconfident
How confident are you in the quality of 
enrollment data? 1. Very confident
2. Somewhat confident
3. Not confident
enrollmentquality
Why are you only somewhat or not 
confident? write down text response if school_type!=3 & enrollme
attendance2019
What the attendance rate for grades 1- 6 
for the 2019/2020 school year? if attendance2019_yn==1
attendance2019_1 grade 1 if attendance2019_yn==1
attendance2019_2 grade 2 if attendance2019_yn==1
attendance2019_3 grade 3 if attendance2019_yn==1
attendance2019_4 grade 4 if attendance2019_yn==1
attendance2019_5 grade 5 if attendance2019_yn==1
attendance2019_6 grade 6 if attendance2019_yn==1
attendance2020_yn
Do you have attendance data from the 
2020/2021 school year? 1. Yes
2. No
attendance2020
What the attendance rate for grades 1- 6 
for the 2020/2021 school year? if attendance2020_yn==1
attendance2020_1 grade 1 if attendance2020_yn==1
attendance2020_2 grade 2 if attendance2020_yn==1
attendance2020_3 grade 3 if attendance2020_yn==1
attendance2020_4 grade 4 if attendance2020_yn==1
attendance2020_5 grade 5 if attendance2020_yn==1
attendance2020_6 grade 6 if attendance2020_yn==1
attendancehow How do you collect attendance data? write down text response
attendanceconfident
How confident are you in the quality of 
attendance data? 1. Very confident
2. Somewhat confident
3. Not confident
attendancequality
Why are you only somewhat or not 
confident? write down text response if attendanceconfident!=1
note2
Tell the director you would like to look at 
the latrines and water source
latrine_num
How many latrines does the school have 
for students? 1. No latrine for students if 1, skip to…
2. One latrine for students
3. Two or more latrines for students
latrine_marked Are the latrines for boys and girls marked? 1. Yes
2. No
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
78
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
note3
If there are two latrines, review the one 
used by girls only. If there is not one for 
girls only, review either one. if latrine_num==3
latrine_water Is the latrine connected to water? 1. Yes
2. No
latrine_waterwork Is the water connection working? 1. Yes if latrine_water==1
2. No
latrine_clean How clean is the latrine? 1. Very clean
2. Somewhat clean
3. Not clean
latrine_structure How well mainted is the latrine structure? 1. Very well maintained
2. Somewhat maintained
3. Not maintained
latrine_sink
Is the the latrine equiped with a sink for 
hand washing? 1. Yes
2. No
latrine_sinkclean How clean is the sink area? 1. Very clean
2. Somewhat clean
3. Not clean
latrine_soap Is there soap? 1. Yes
2. No
latrine_towel
Is there a clean towel or other material 
for drying hands? 1. Yes
2. No
latrine_boys
If there are two latrines, check the boys 
latrine. Is the the boys latrine in better, 
worse or the same overall condition 
compared to the girls latrine? 1. Better
2. The same
3. Worse
water
What is the source of drinking water at 
the school? 1. Piped water
2. Tubewell/borehole
3. Protected dug well
4. Unprotected dug well
5. Protected spring
6. Unprotected spring
7. Rainwater collection
8. Water tank filled by truck
9. Surface water (pond, lake, river, etc)
10. Other
water_test
Try to get some water. Do you have any 
problems accessing water or do you see 
any problems with the water? 1. Yes
2. No
water_issues What are the problems? 1. Limit quantity if water_test==1
2. Water takes time to come
3. Equipment old/not working
4. Water does not look clean
5 . Area is not clean
6. Other (specify)
water_property Is this water source on school property? 1. Yes
2. No
water_distance
How many minutes walking is the water 
source from the school? 1. < 2 minutes if water_property==2
2. >2 to 5 minutes
3. 5 to 10 minutes
4. > 10 minutes
geopoint Geopoint
Please take the GPS 
coordinates of the 
interview location.
endtime Interview end time
Thank the director for their 
time and end the 
interview.
79
Parent Qualitative Survey Tool
Question # Question name Question Responses Note to interviewer Logic 
starttime Start time Automatic
startdate Start date Automatic
note
You have been selected to 
participate in interviews on health, 
nutrition and education as part of 
the The Future is Ours! project. 
Your participation in this study is 
entirely voluntary. You are under no 
obligation to participate. You have 
the right to refuse to answer 
questions and to withdraw from the 
study at any time. If you agree, 
please answer all questions as 
honestly as possible. If you are 
unable to answer one of the 
questions, you can ignore the 
question. All your answers are 
strictly confidential.
consent
Ask for the respondents consent. If 
the person agrees, continue the 
interview. Yes
No
interviewer_name Interviewer name Multiple choice tbd
device_id deviceid
region Region Brakna
Gorgol
school_type What type of school is this? MGD Pilot school
MGD non-pilot school
Control school
department Department Aleg If region = Brakna, show 
Bababe
Bouge
M'Bagne
Magtar Lahjar
Kaedi If region = Gorgol, show 
M'Bout
Maghama
Monguel
municipality Municipality Multiple choice tbd
school Name of school Multiple choice tbd
gender What is the gender of the parent? 1. Male
2. Female
children_num
How many children do you have in 
grades 1 to 6?
grade
In which grades are the parents 
children? 1st multiple choice
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
languagehome
What language do you speak most 
of the time at home? 1. Arabic multiple choice
2. French
3. Berber
4. Other (specify)
latrine
Do you think your children would 
miss less school if the school had 
better latrines? Explain. write down text responses
water
Do you think your children would 
miss less school if the school had 
better access to water? Explain write down text responses
handwashing
When do you wash your hands each 
day? write down text responses
handwashing_what
What do you use to wash your 
hands? write down text responses
handwashing_children
Do your children also wash their 
hands like you do? If not, why not? write down text responses
food
What do your children usually eat 
when they are in school? Is it 
enough? write down text responses
food_where
Where do they eat it? Do they ever 
miss school because they are 
eating? write down text responses
absence
When your children don't go to 
school, what are the main reasons? write down text responses
absence_partial
What about the reasons for when 
your children come to school late or 
leave early? write down text responses
geopoint Geopoint
Please take the GPS 
coordinates of the 
interview location.
endtime Interview end time
Thank the director for their 
time and end the 
interview.
80
Government Interview Guide
Introduction
Please read this to the interviewee: You have been selected to participate in interviews on school 
feeding, health, nutrition, and education as part of the USDA funded The Future is Ours! project. Your 
participation in this study is entirely voluntary. You have the right to refuse to answer questions and to 
withdraw from the study at any time. If you agree, please answer all questions as honestly as possible. 
If you are unable to answer one of the questions, you can ignore the question. All your answers are 
strictly confidential. Do you agree to participate? 
If they agree, start the interview. 
Respondent Background 
1. Region and department:
2. Gender: 
3. Office: 
4. Interviewee position:
5. How long have you worked in this position?
Commitment
6. Why is The Future is Ours! project important to for you and your office/department?
7. What is the government’s school feeding policy and programs? 
8. How has it changed over the last 5 years, if at all?
9. Are there any changes planned for the next few years? What are they?
Capacity
10. How does the government implement school feeding policy or programs? How does it monitor 
the program? 
11. What are the strengths of the government’s school feeding policy and programs?
12. What are the weaknesses? 
13. Besides funding, what are some challenges of school feeding in Mauritania? 
14. One day, the U.S. government will want to hand over this school feeding program to the GoM. 
When that day comes, do you think will the GoM be able to continue the program? If not, what 
support would be needed to help the government continue it? 
Attendance 
15. What is your office’s role in collecting and using school enrolment and attendance data?
16. Do you find the data to generally be reliable? Why or why not?
17. How could it be improved, if at all?
Thank you for your time!
81
Annex 6: Results Framework
Results Framework for Improved Literacy of School Aged Children
82
Results Framework for Increased Use of Health, Nutrition and Dietary Practices