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chapter 3: literacy-related activities in the home
New Zealand, Scotland, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British
Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Ontario, where 25 percent or more of students
had parents reporting more than 100 children’s books in the home. However,
there were also countries with relatively few children’s books in the home.
In Bulgaria, Georgia, Hong Kong SAR, Macedonia, Moldova, Qatar, and
Romania, more than 25 percent of students were from homes with no more
than 10 children’s books, and in Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait, Morocco, and South
Africa, the situation was even worse, with the majority of students in homes
with 10 or fewer children’s books.
The average reading achievement difference between students from
homes with many children’s books and those from homes with few children’s
books was very large. Students from homes with more than 100 children’s
books had an average achievement score of 553 score points, whereas those
from homes with 10 books or fewer had an average of just 462 points—
a difference of 91 score points (almost 1 standard deviation on the PIRLS
reading scale). There were large average achievement differences between
students from homes with many children’s books and those from homes with
few books in every country.
Because of the association between number of children’s books in the
home and average reading achievement at fourth grade, Exhibit 3.4 presents
information on trends in parents’ reports on children’s book ownership
from 2001. More specifically, for those countries that also participated in
PIRLS 2001, the exhibit shows the percentage of students in each category of
book ownership in 2006 and the change in the percentage since 2001. The
average across all countries is shown at the foot of each column.
On average across the countries, there was a slight decrease in parents’
reports of the number of children’s books in the home, perhaps reflecting
increased access to other literacy media, primarily Internet based. For the
countries shown in Exhibit 3.4 (a subset of the entire group of PIRLS 2006
participants), 14 percent of students, on average, had parents reporting more
than 100 children’s books in the home in 2006, a decrease of 2 percentage
points from 2001. There also was a slight decrease in the percentage of
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