Chapter 2. Progress towards the EFA goals - Unesco

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CHAPTER 2
2
Education for All Global Monitoring Report
It is crucial
for reading
difficulties to be
detected early
and acted
upon quickly
40. The positive
correlation between
comprehension and oral
reading fluency has been
the subject of much
research. For additional
examples see Kudo and
Bazan (2009) and RTI
International (2008).
41. In the United States,
children are identified as
being at risk of developing
learning difficulties if their
reading speed is below
seventy words per minute
in grade 2 and below
eighty in grade 3.
42. It is not possible to
compare across countries
in the table owing to the
different languages used
and differences in the
ages of student
populations.
Teaching reading in the early
primary grades is crucial for learning
Children lacking reading and comprehension
skills are unable to use textbooks and other
written materials and to take advantage of learning
opportunities in or out of school. Research shows
that children who have difficulties acquiring these
skills in their early lives are likely to struggle
throughout their school careers (Jukes et al.,
2006). Schools in many developing countries are
failing to equip young learners with these basic
skills. If the EFA quality goal is to be achieved,
it is crucial for reading difficulties to be detected
early and acted upon quickly.
Understanding is central to the achievement of
reading skills. Children need to be able to read
with sufficient fluency to obtain meaning from
what is being read. Reading accurately and quickly
has been shown in many cases to be strongly
correlated with comprehension (Abadzi, 2006;
Fuchs et al., 2001). In a small-scale survey of
Peruvian first and second graders, children who
could answer a set of three comprehension
questions correctly read on average at seventyseven
words per minute, compared with fifteen
words per minute for children who only answered
one comprehension question correctly (Abadzi
et al., 2005). 40 Early grade reading assessments
aim to test comprehension by measuring reading
fluency (Box 2.24). Estimates vary, but reading
fluency in excess of forty words per minute
is thought to be required for comprehension
(Abadzi, 2006). 41
Small-scale reading assessments conducted in
several low-income countries paint a worrying
picture (Table 2.7). 42 While these tests are not
nationally representative, they often point to
very low levels of fluency in reading. Average
performance in many test sites falls far short of
automatic reading, implying that large numbers
of children are failing to achieve the basic reading
skills necessary to facilitate further learning:
In Gambia, children in grades 1 to 3 were able,
on average, to read six words correctly in a
minute.
In Liberia, grade 2 students could read eighteen
words per minute. Although fluency increased
in grade 3, it was still below the estimated forty
words per minute required for comprehension.
Looking beyond the averages reveals the poor
outcomes for some children:
In Ethiopia, a 2008 study of grade 3 students
in Woliso district found that 36% could not read
a single word in Afan Oromo, the local language
(DeStefano and Elaheebocus, 2009).
In Guatemala, two-thirds of students could read
more than forty words correctly per minute but
wide disparities across language groups existed.
Students whose mother tongue was Mam had
average reading speeds below forty words per
minute whereas students whose mother tongue
was Quiche or Spanish read more than sixty
words per minute (Dowd, 2009).
Assessing reading skills early in primary school
provides an opportunity to identify children with low
learning achievement and take remedial measures
that can help prevent dropout and grade repetition.
It is far less time-consuming and costly to prevent
low achievement at an early age than to act later.
Evidence from several countries demonstrates
that policy interventions can make a difference
in improving reading skills. Involving schools and
communities is a key to success. A programme
operated by a non-government organization in
Uttar Pradesh, India, has used ‘remedial reading
camps’ run by volunteer trainers to achieve
impressive improvements in early reading
(Box 2.25). In the Malindi district of Kenya, teachers
were trained for five days on a set of carefully
designed lessons to teach effective reading skills
to grade 2 students (Crouch et al., 2009). Significant
improvements resulted: comparing grade 2 results
before and after teachers were trained showed that
reading speeds had improved by 80%, on average.
While it is difficult to attribute all the improvement
to the training, the study showed that this relatively
small intervention and the information it generated
on the poor state of reading skills contributed
significantly. 43 Pilot studies in Mali and the Niger
in 2007 also demonstrated promising approaches
to improving reading skills at relatively low cost
(Mitton, 2008).
Whether such pilot programmes can be scaled up
to improve reading across national education
43. The study was set up as a randomized trial but improvement in
reading skills was seen in schools where the teachers had received the
training as well as in the schools where they did not. The study showed
that leakage of teaching techniques and the transfer of teachers between
control and treatment schools accounted for similar improvements in
both types of schools.
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