The impacts of a culturally relevant book flood on early literacy in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Determining the most effective means to improve literacy rates in low resource educational environments remains an important challenge. We explored literacy impacts of a book flood of culturally relevant reading books in Papua New Guinea (PNG) through teacher training and distributing 25,240 copies of 126 culturally relevant books to 150 schools. The project also included 150 control schools. We sampled Elementary 1 and 2 level cohorts in 79 schools at baseline and 79 Elementary 2 level schools at follow up - over 1,100 children at each stage - and found statistically significantly greater improvements in the intervention group’s reading comprehension. Our analysis indicates that the flood of culturally relevant books was the principal reason.