Pedagogy versus School Readiness : The Impact of a Randomized Reading Instruction Intervention and Community-Based Playgroup Intervention on Early Grade Reading Outcomes in Tonga
Identifying cost-effective interventions to improve early literacy is vital to developing countries, given the importance of early literacy for an individual's future education outcomes and subsequent human capital formation. This paper presen...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/651771484764766333/Pedagogy-versus-school-readiness-the-impact-of-a-randomized-reading-instruction-intervention-and-community-based-playgroup-intervention-on-early-grade-reading-outcomes-in-Tonga http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25953 |
| Summary: | Identifying cost-effective
interventions to improve early literacy is vital to
developing countries, given the importance of early literacy
for an individual's future education outcomes and
subsequent human capital formation. This paper presents the
impact on early grade reading outcomes of two low-cost
randomized interventions in Tonga: a reading instruction
intervention and a community play-based activity
intervention. The first intervention aims to improve early
grade reading outcomes specifically; estimated impacts are
approximately 0.3 standard deviation, although in some
reading domains impacts are substantial, ranging from 0.6 to
0.7 standard deviation. The second intervention aims to
improve school readiness and subsequently early grade
reading outcomes, by providing communities with support to
establish a community play-based activity. Using an
instrumental variables approach, the play-based activity
demonstrates positive impacts of around 0.2 standard
deviation in many but not all reading domains. For the
domains where a statistically significant impact is
measured, the community play-based activity intervention is
as at least as cost effective as the reading instruction
intervention. The play-based activity intervention is shown
to improve test scores by 0.21 to 0.47 standard deviation
per US$100, depending on the reading test domain. The
reading instruction intervention improves test scores by
0.08 to 0.34 standard deviation per US$100. These findings
contribute further evidence on the effectiveness of reading
instruction interventions, and possibly the first estimates
of the impact of play group–type interventions on primary
school reading outcomes. |
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