A Randomized Evaluation of a Low-Cost and Highly Scripted Teaching Method to Improve Basic Early Grade Reading Skills in Papua New Guinea
Early grade literacy skills are crucial for children's future education and ultimately their contribution to human capital formation and economic development. A significant challenge in development is identifying low-cost interventions to impr...
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/247501525353958692/A-randomized-evaluation-of-a-low-cost-and-highly-scripted-teaching-method-to-improve-basic-early-grade-reading-skills-in-Papua-New-Guinea http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29833 |
| Summary: | Early grade literacy skills are crucial
for children's future education and ultimately their
contribution to human capital formation and economic
development. A significant challenge in development is
identifying low-cost interventions to improve early literacy
skills in contexts characterized by varying teacher ability
and severe budget constraints. This paper evaluates the
impact of Papua New Guinea's randomized Reading Booster
Programme, which was conducted in Madang and Western
Highlands Province in 2013 and 2014, respectively. The
program provided teachers with training on a highly
structured teaching method that they could apply one hour
per day within the teaching time allocated to reading. Using
the randomized assignment of schools into the program, the
paper shows that it had a substantial impact on the reading
skills targeted by the program for third grade students,
ranging from 0.6 to 0.7 standard deviation. Large effects on
other reading skills were found for girls but not boys. The
program's cost per student was approximately US$60. |
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