Abstract
Many students still leave school without a good grasp of basic literacy, despite the negative implications for future educational and labour market outcomes. We evaluate how resources may be used within classrooms to reinforce the teaching of literacy. Specifically, teaching assistants are trained to deliver a tightly structured package of materials to groups of young children aged 5–6. The training is randomly allocated between and within schools. Within schools, teaching assistants are randomly assigned to receive training in either computer-aided instruction or the paper equivalent. Both interventions have a short-term impact on children's reading scores, although the effect is bigger for the paper intervention and more enduring in the subsequent year. This paper shows how teaching assistants can be used to better effect within schools, and at a low cost.
Highlights
A significant number of children leave primary school with low levels of literacy
The intervention was targeted on activities important for reading, it might impact on other subjects
Point estimates are 0.04 and 0 for writing and maths, respectively, and show a pattern of results that is consistent with estimates for the NonICT condition, and with the overall short-term results
Summary
Despite much effort to improve basic skills in England, about 11% of children still leave primary school without having achieved the ‘expected level’ set out in the National Curriculum. This is a long-standing problem in England as it is in many other developed countries. Teaching assistants account for about 18% of the average school budget in English primary schools.3 They usually do not have high-level qualifications and are often used in classrooms to help students with special needs or from low-income backgrounds. Studies about their effectiveness are mostly correlational.. The intervention is not to replace core literacy instruction, nor to substantially affect the actual resources available to schools
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