Millions of children in low- and middle-income countries are failing to learn to read because teachers are not using proven, evidence-based methods. A new report on the “science of reading” identifies the classroom practices that are holding back literacy and offers guidance on how countries can turn the learning crisis around.
According to the report, launched last week, children need two key skills to learn to read: decoding, or mapping written symbols to sounds; and language comprehension, or understanding words, sentences, and texts. Yet many teachers lack both the training and the tools to teach them effectively.
The report breaks new ground by drawing on more than 150 studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East — a rare synthesis of evidence from low- and middle-income countries and across roughly 170 languages.