As of the advent of peace in 2002 the Angolan education system implemented a range of reform initiatives, which led to an increase in student enrolment.

To assess the quality of the system, the Angolan Ministry of Education, with support from the World Bank, initiated the design of a survey to assess reading skills among third-grade children.

Sistemas Integrales assisted the Ministry to design and implement this survey, the first national-level assessment of its kind in Angola.

• The first step was to construct an inventory of schools from which to draw a sample of 144 schools spanning each of Angola’s six major regions. Within each school, the survey assessed 36 children in third grade and interviewed class teachers, head teachers and parents or guardians.

• Sistemas Integrales further assisted the Education Ministry in the organization of fieldwork, the development of a data entry program and quality assurance. For example, field staff, who would work in teams of three interviewers plus one supervisor, would enter the data as they were collected and check them for consistency while the team is still at that school. With this, any errors could be corrected before data were sent to the survey’s central team. The whole process of assessments, interviews, and reinterviewing as necessary would involve one week in each school.