Wael Moussa

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Researcher at FHI 360

In this paper, we explore the impact of syllabic versus alphabetic teaching methods on early grade literacy outcomes in the local language, Hausa, in Northern Nigeria. We conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial involving 1,708 Grade 1 students across 275 schools in Northern Nigeria and found that the syllabic approach significantly improved...

Existing literacy studies in low-income countries heavily emphasize school factors. This article shifts focus, examining how home-based reading resources and interactions predict children’s reading via a non-experimental study. Data involve 2,886 children aged 5–13 in Ghana, selected through a two-stage random sampling. Regression analyses show tha...

This paper provides a methodological framework to measure and analyze educational resource allocation within and across systems and ascertain potential equity implications. The proposed approach employs an outputs-driven method to provide a snapshot of the equitable distribution of key educational resources available in relation to student populati...

Research has indicated that reading aloud to young students can enhance their foundational reading skills and their reading motivation, but such research has been lacking in African contexts. In this study, we assessed the efficacy of story read‐aloud lessons in improving students’ foundational reading skills in Nigeria. The experiment took place i...

This study provides comprehensive evidence on the negative effects of physical, sexual, and emotional violence on children’s well-being and educational outcomes in Northern Nigeria. In this paper, we analyzed household survey data, conducted surveys with a representative sample of pupils, and carried out interviews and focus groups with stakeholder...

Evidence-based ‘best practices’ from high-resource contexts have motivated some early grade literacy programs in developing countries to hire private literacy specialists as coaches for teachers, rather than build coaching into the job description of existing system actors, such as school inspectors. This study poses the question, can education sys...

The promise of public education is in expanding opportunity and accelerating pathways for individuals regardless of their background, physical ability, or place of residence. This promise drives SDG 4: "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all", which has galvanized governments and donors around equity, and pushed the education comm...

This paper demonstrates that education can be an effective policy instrument to mitigate economic inequality among marginalized gender and identity groups in developing countries. We characterize the disparities in economic opportunity between gender, identity (ethnic or religious), and gender-by-identity groups in relation to disparities in educat...

High school graduation rates are a central policy topic in the United States and have been shown to be stagnant for the past three decades (Heckman and Lafontaine, 2010). Using student-level administrative data from New York City Public Schools, I examine the impact of compulsory school attendance on high school graduation rates and grade attainmen...