A Global Compact on Learning - Brookings Institution

to manage the book banks, and provides a curriculum
to conduct reading awareness workshops
for parents. After one year, students demonstrated
progress in letter identification (Nepal), oral reading
fluency (Nepal and Malawi), and comprehending
connected text (Malawi), as compared with control
schools that started with similar scores. 136 Other examples
include the use of e-readers that download
reading materials so that children can have access to
new reading materials, often at a lower cost. Some
e-readers, such as those used by Worldreader.org’s
iRead pilot in Ghana, operate on the mobile phone
networks that are growing rapidly worldwide and
require low-levels of energy consumption. 137 Pilots
have shown, however, that getting technology into
schools alone is not enough; teachers and students
need to be trained and supported to ensure that the
particular technology is being used as intended.
There is still much learning needed when it comes
to the use of technology to deliver high-quality and
cost-effective education.
Box 3.3. Building a Lifelong Habit of Reading
A key component of increasing literacy is ensuring
that children have access to age-appropriate
and relevant reading material. The Room
to Read initiative has built 11,000 libraries in
nine developing countries to give children fun
and engaging reading materials and encourage
reading. The presence of school libraries, specifically
with reading material in the language
of instruction, has been shown to significantly
increase the time children spend reading. For
example, Room to Read found that in Zambia
students were 37 percent more likely to read silently
when they had access to a library. Furthermore,
in Nepal, students with access to a library
were 42 percent more likely to read for leisure at
school and 86 percent more likely at home. Similar
results were seen in Room to Read programs
in Laos, stressing the importance of libraries and
relevant reading material to students’ success.
Sources: Room to Read website (www.roomtoread.org); Juarez &
Associates Inc., Reading Room Cross-National Evaluation: Year 1:
Findings from Zambia, Nepal, and Laos. San Francisco: Room to Read,
2009.
Strategy 2B: Provide Mother-Tongue-
Based Multilingual Education in the Lower
Primary Grades
Fifty percent of the world’s out-of-school children
live in communities where the language of instruction
in school is rarely, if ever, used at home. 138 The
language of instruction obviously has profound effects
on children’s ability to access and learn effectively
in school. Research indicates that having a
strong foundation in a first language, especially during
the early years of school, is crucial to a child’s educational
success. 139 Using a language of instruction
that children do not understand leads to increased
repetition and dropout rates and poor educational
achievement for those who stay in school. 140 In one
study, analysis of data from twenty-two developing
countries and 160 language groups revealed
that children who had access to instruction in their
mother tongue were significantly more likely to be
enrolled and attending school. Conversely, a lack of
education in a child’s first language was a significant
reason for children dropping out. 141
Children aged five to six years have, on average, a
working vocabulary of 2,500 to 5,000 words by the
time they enter the classroom. 142 This knowledge is
essentially wasted when they are unable to use and
build upon their skills. Rather than impeding children’s
ability to learn the official language, studies
show that schooling in a child’s mother tongue is
a strong predictor of achievement in a second language.
143 For example, children learning under the
“mother-tongue-based multilingual education” approach
in Lubuagan, the Philippines (in English,
Filipino, and Lubuagan), outperformed their peers
who learned in English and Filipino not only in
their mother tongue but also in English and Filipino.
144 There is also growing evidence that early bilingualism
can provide children with benefits that go
beyond knowing more than one language, including
cognitive flexibility and the ability to transfer knowledge
across languages earlier and better than their
monolingual peers. 145 Additionally, the use of home
language in school can increase parents’ participation
in their children’s education. Mother-tonguebased
multilingual education may be even more
A <strong>Global</strong> Compa c t on Learning: Taking Action on Educat i o n in Developing Countries
C e n t e r for Universal Educat i o n at Brookings
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