Impact at Scale Labs: Acceleration to Fluency

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Impact at Scale Labs: Acceleration to Fluency seeks to transform education systems by working with promising innovators to identify and validate a small set of practical, classroom‑based solutions that can move children further, faster toward fluent reading by the end of Grade 3, and that can be implemented and scaled with governments in Sub‑Saharan Africa.

Strategic Priority

Knowledge Accelerator

Funding Catalyst

Partnership Builder

Who will Acceleration to Fluency support?

This programme aims to identify instructional practices that benefit Grade 1-3 children in public schools in sub-Saharan Africa. Through this programme, we selected classroom-based instructional practices that can be implemented in African public-school classrooms and have the potential to be affordable within government systems. They can be delivered in any language relevant to the setting. We were particularly interested in approaches that incorporate specific instructional practices with high potential to accelerate fluency at scale. These practices include:

Phonics instruction
Reading practice
Spelling or writing instruction
Literacy-based language instruction
Assessment-informed instruction
Other literacy solutions with strong research-based rationale

We were also looking to uncover innovative AI-enabled solutions that are used to deliver one or more of these instructional practices.

Meet our four grantees and their innovations

Associates in Research and Education for Development (Senegal)

Through DawalLire, ARED is weaving two routines into the Ministry of National Education's harmonised bilingual programme: guided reading games with corrective feedback, differentiated by reading level, and structured spelling activities that connect reading to writing. Both draw on existing curriculum texts, so fluency practice needs no new materials.

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Children in Crossfire (Tanzania)

Children in Crossfire is adapting fluency-oriented reading instruction and dialogic reading for large, multilingual classrooms where many children begin school speaking no Kiswahili, building oral language and reading skills side by side within Tanzania's mandated 30-minute lesson.

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Children's Book Organisation (Tanzania) in collaboration with CODE

Children's Book Organisation and CODE have built Soma Kwa Ufasaha, pairing ward-based rotation of supplementary readers with a short daily reading routine. It shifts classrooms from textbook-bound teaching to guided daily reading, moving through modelled fluent reading, phonics-linked word work, shared reading, paired rereading with feedback, and short text-linked writing.

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Girl MOVE Academy (Mozambique)

Girl MOVE Academy runs near-peer literacy circles, where trained Grade 8 to 12 student mentors lead literacy instruction for small groups of five children, grouped by reading level rather than grade. Twice-weekly sessions use bilingual scaffolding, starting in Emakhuwa and moving into Portuguese as children build reading fluency and comprehension.

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Acceleration to Fluency will support locally-led organisations and Africa-based researchers with:

Grant funding

Selected organisations and researchers will receive up to US$350,000 to implement and evaluate their fluency solution.

Tailored coaching and technical support

Grantees will receive 27 months of tailor-made support to codify, test and refine their fluency solution.

Access to ecosystem partners and peers:

Grantees will be given the opportunity to engage with the global GSF member base and wider network to share evidence and encourage replication of impactful solutions.

Reading fluency

If 90% of children could read by age 10, worldwide GDP per capita would be 27% higher by 2050. Hundreds of millions more would complete primary school, more young people would access stable, meaningful employment, and millions of child deaths could be averted. Learning to read now will have a transformative impact for generations of children.

At the moment, even the best programmes leave too many children short of reading proficiency. There is an urgent need for innovations that move more children further and faster towards skilled reading. Building foundational skills early will enable students to read and understand the texts they encounter later in school, unlocking the academic, economic, and civic benefits education is meant to deliver.

Tier 1: Demonstration

Scale & scope: Targeting 80–120 schools
Focus: Supporting solutions that are ready to be tested at scale. Funding covers research and implementation across a wide range of schools and diverse contexts, with the goal of demonstrating effectiveness under real-world conditions.
Budget: Up to $350,000 over two years

Tier 2: Proof of Concept

Scale & scope: Targeting 50–80 schools
Focus: Supporting solutions at an earlier stage of development. Funding covers research and implementation at a smaller scale, with a focus on isolating specific components of the solution that could drive impact.
Budget: Up to $200,000 over two years

Impact at Scale Labs testimonials

Because of the Impact at Scale Lab, we have stronger thinking and alignment around impact measurement. Engagements around MEL, Theory of Change, and evidence use sharpened our approach to measuring outcomes—not only for children, but also for caregivers and employers. This has opened pathways for future collaboration with research partners and policymakers interested in evidence-informed childcare models.

Prisca Muyodi

Nawirika Foundation

Our organisations have dedicated time to delve into crucial topics like building partnerships and strengthening evidence for scale. Practitioners and thought leaders from the eduction community— including Ruth Kagia (GPE), Ben Piper (Gates Foundation), and Samuel Kembou (Jacobs Foundation)—shared their insights and fresh perspective. Their contributions sparked meaningful discussions on evidence-based methods for scaling FLN initiatives.

Craig Paxton

Axium Education

The Lab’s Scale Readiness framework has been very helpful in providing structure and planning for Sabre as we develop our work with low-fee private schools in Ghana. The framework gives us a pathway to understand the market and viability in terms of low-fee private schools.

Susan Place-Everhart

Sabre Education

Knowledge Accelerator

Funding Catalyst

Partnership Builder

Impact at Scale Labs

The Impact at Scale Labs programme provides catalytic funding and tailored support to help promising, locally-led education organisations scale their impact. The programme works with grantees to generate and distil evidence and learnings on what works in education and why, sharing these findings to inform national, regional, and global policies and programmes.

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Knowledge Accelerator

Funding Catalyst

Partnership Builder

Impact at Scale Labs: Early Years in Kenya

Impact at Scale Labs – Early Years in Kenya supports locally led organisations that are playing an increasingly important role in improving access to, and the quality of, childcare and early childhood education and development in Kenya.

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