How Well Do Children Read in Timor-Leste? An Assessment of Oral Reading Fluency

Gratefully contributed by the World Bank, Dili office
[Photos: © EFA FTI project, Ministry of Education]

An early grade reading assessment (EGRA) was carried out during July-August 2009 in 40 primary schools in Timor-Leste testing the reading skills of more than 900 children in grades 1-3. EGRA aims to help countries measure how well children are learning to read in the early grades of primary education. The study was carried out by consultants to the Ministry of Education with support from the World Bank. Funding was available from the grants from the EFA FTI’s Catalytic Fund. Timor-Leste joined the EFA FTI Partnership in November 2005 and has since received in total of US$13 million from the Catalytic Fund for the years 2006, 2007 and 2009 from which the EGRA exercise was funded.  

Reading skills were assessed in Portuguese and Tetum, the local lingua franca. The assessment measured pre-reading skills such as recognition of where a text starts and ends, recognition of letters and sounds, and pronunciation of common and invented words, as well as actual reading fluency and listening comprehension skills.

The results are mixed

• About one third of the students in grade 3 were able to read about 60 words in per minute which is considered a minimum standard for reading fluency.
• More than 70 percent of students at the end of grade 1 could not read a single word of the simple text passage they were asked to read.
• 40 percent of children were not able to read a single word at the end of grade 2; and the share of children scoring zero dropped to about 20 percent at the end of grade 3.
• The assessment provides clear evidence that many children spend years in primary schools without learning to read.

The EGRA results also show that:

• behaviors associated with better reading skills included children being read to at school and at home, regular school attendance, and the assignment of homework
• many children miss out on attaining reading skills which contributes to the high rates of grade repetition and dropouts.

Investments are obviously called for in areas such as reading-focused teacher training, developing and distributing textbooks and instructional materials, creating libraries, improving and expanding pre-schools, and developing measurable reading standards that all teachers and parents can understand. The Ministry of Education is already mobilizing teacher training programs and the distribution of materials to begin early in the 2010 school year with improved reading instructions. The interventions will be lead by the Ministry of Education, with technical support from advisors, and funded by the EFA FTI grant. But much more needs to be done to improve the skills of teachers and make sure schools have better resources.