Category Archives: Literacy

MPs call for action on pandemic-widened gap between England’s poor and rich pupils

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Public accounts committee warns that without more intervention, attainment gap could take decade to return to pre-Covid levels

It could take a decade for the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their wealthier peers to return to pre-pandemic levels in England without faster and more effective intervention, MPs have warned.

The estimate was made during evidence given to parliament’s influential public accounts committee (PAC) as part of its inquiry into education recovery after the disruption of Covid.

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Children read almost 25% more books last year, UK and Ireland study finds

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What Kids Are Reading report found communities on sites such as TikTok helped stimulate interest in reading

The number of books read by children increased by almost a quarter last year, according to a report, as BookTok and other social media trends stimulated interest in reading for young people.

The 2023 What Kids Are Reading report, which surveyed children in the UK and Ireland, found that pupils read 27,265,657 books in the 2021-2022 academic year, 24% more than the 2020-2021 academic year.

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Sudan faces ‘generational catastrophe’ as millions of children miss school

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Floods, militia raids and hunger mean a third of children are not in school at all, while the rest have too few teachers, aid groups warn

Nearly every school-age child in Sudan is missing out on education, either completely or facing serious disruption, aid organisations have warned.

Schools in some states reopened this week after delays due to severe flooding but millions of children are still unable to go, leaving the country facing a “generational catastrophe”.

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‘House of love’: the calm, creative space changing young lives in Karachi

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In Lyari, a slum notorious for violence in Pakistan’s most populous city, Mehr Ghar offers young people a safe place to hang out and study – and, for many, an alternative path to gang life

Living in Lyari was like living on the frontlines of a war, says Nauroz Ghani, who grew up in the Karachi slum notorious for its bloody gang battles. So used to the constant gunfire, he says he would “become restless if a day passed by without hearing the sound of a firing”.

“My teenage years were lost to violence,” says Ghani, 24. “I had no interest in getting an education. Instead, I was attracted by their guns and activities.” He saw dead bodies on the street and one boy was killed in front of him. “All of us who lived during those days have such memories. We lived in terror, but it had become habitual.”

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‘I didn’t find the exam difficult’: Indian woman learns to read and write at 104 – video

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A 104-year-old woman has fulfilled her dream to learn to read. After starting in April, Kuttiyamma achieved 89% in literacy and 100% in mathematics in the Kerala state primary literacy exam last month, the oldest woman to do so.

Kuttiyamma had been curious about reading and would often try to make out the alphabet herself, but when she was born in a village to a low-caste rural family, there was no education. Her neighbour Rehana John, a 34-year-old literacy trainer, persuaded her to start to learn to read. Previously, John’s oldest student had been 85

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‘I was always curious’: Indian woman, 104, fulfils dream of learning to read

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Daily newspaper is new joy for Kuttiyamma, who began taking lessons from her neighbour a year ago

For almost a century, Kuttiyamma’s daily routine had been much the same. Rising early at home in the village of Thiruvanchoor in Kerala, the 104-year-old would begin her day’s work of cooking, cleaning and feeding the cows and chickens.

But now, every morning, there’s something new to get up for. She eagerly awaits the paperboy to deliver Malayala Manorama, the local newspaper.

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Bearing gifts: the camels bringing books to Pakistan’s poorest children

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The mobile library services are an education lifeline for students in Balochistan, where schools have closed during the pandemic

Sharatoon had wanted to continue her studies, but she had to leave school and her beloved books when she got married aged 15.

Now 27, Sharatoon is happy reading again, as every Friday a camel visits her small town, his saddle panniers full of books.

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Covid ‘may leave 12 million children unable to read’

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UN finds pandemic is widening education inequality with millions of girls unlikely to return to school

More than half of all children who turn 10 this year will reach their milestone birthday without being able to read a simple sentence, according to a new analysis of UN data.

Of those 70 million 10-year-olds, 11.5 million of them could be unable to read as a direct result of the impact on education of the Covid pandemic.

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The bookseller of Tunis: one man’s fight to preserve relic of bygone age

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As news of its uncertain future spreads, readers are flocking to the city’s oldest bookshop – but can it survive changing tastes and technology?

Despite the pandemic, shoppers crowd the small bookshop at 18 Rue d’Angleterre. Many are here for the first time, squeezing their way between the stacks of books piled high along the walls of the bookshop said to be the oldest in Tunis.

Sunk within an obscure street near the city’s medina, there is little to distinguish number 18 from its rival further down the street, or the small haphazard book stands that shelter in the square opposite from a rain that never quite comes. All nestle amid the bleached awnings of the French ville nouvelle, itself marking the transition from the storied Arab architecture of the medina to the grand colonial designs of Tunis’ city centre.

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‘I feel free here’: how a miracle girls’ school was built in India’s ‘golden city’

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A strikingly-designed centre reminiscent of Rajasthan’s famous forts will soon be opening its doors in conservative Jaisalmer

“Don’t even try,” friends told Michael Daube, when he said he wanted to coax women in Jaisalmer to embroider yoga bags to help them earn some income.

For the most part, at least in rural areas, this is Federico García Lorca territory, where marriage for a woman, as a character in the Spanish poet’s play Blood Wedding describes it, is “a man, children, and as for the rest a wall that’s two feet thick”. Rajasthan is one of the most conservative states in India, where ancient customs circumscribe a woman’s freedom and in turn any chance of economic independence.

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Moving stories: inside the book buses changing children’s lives

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Around the world, mobile library programmes are taking books, educational support and even counselling to communities in serious and urgent need

Every week, two converted blue buses stocked with children’s books carefully navigate the streets of Kabul, avoiding areas where deadly explosions are common. These travelling libraries stop off at schools in different parts of the city, delivering a wealth of reading material directly to youngsters who have limited access to books.

“A lot of schools in our city don’t have access to something as basic as a library,” says Freshta Karim, a 27-year-old Oxford University graduate who was inspired to start Charmaghz, a non-profit, in her home city having grown up without many books herself. “We were trying to understand what we could do to promote critical thinking in our country.”

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Up to 90% of 10-year-olds in world’s poorest countries struggle to read

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World Bank targets ‘learning poverty’ as research shows major shortfall in basic reading skills among least privileged children

Nine out of 10 children in the world’s poorest countries are unable to read a basic book by the age of 10 – a situation mirrored in reverse in rich countries, where only 9% cannot do so by the same age.

Data compiled by the World Bank and the UN also shows that when low- and middle-income countries are taken together – a total of 135 states – more than half of all children cannot read a simple text at 10 years old.

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