A new study published in the Journal of Development Economics examines the effectiveness of light-touch teacher training and community reading camps in improving literacy among elementary school children in rural Mozambique, where only 3% of children read at grade level. Conducted by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in partnership with local universities and the International Food Policy Research Institute, the study involved 160 schools randomly assigned to receive either teacher training, teacher training plus reading camps, or no intervention. Despite expectations that these scalable, low-cost approaches would yield improvements, the results showed minimal impact on reading scores as measured by the Early Grade Reading Assessment after two years. Teacher compliance emerged as a significant challenge, with educators attending only two out of five training days on average, likely due to lack of incentives, supervision, and high teacher turnover.
The reading camps, run by community volunteers and supported by teachers, saw better participation, with about half of students attending regularly. These camps utilized games, stories, and activities to encourage reading outside school hours. However, even the combined intervention of teacher training and camps produced only weak positive effects for the lowest-performing students, such as reducing the number of children scoring zero on some reading measures. The researchers attribute the overall limited success to the low baseline literacy levels in Mozambique and the insufficient intensity of the programs. They conclude that more comprehensive and supervised interventions are necessary to achieve meaningful improvements in learning outcomes in such challenging contexts.
This study underscores the complexity of addressing educational deficits in Sub-Saharan Africa, where high primary school enrollment has not translated into literacy proficiency. The findings suggest that while community-based efforts like reading camps can engage students, they must be paired with stronger, incentivized teacher development programs and systemic support to create sustainable change. For policymakers and NGOs, this research highlights the need for invested, multi-faceted strategies rather than relying on abbreviated or lightly implemented solutions to tackle deep-rooted educational crises.
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Forrás: https://phys.org/news/2025-08-explores-teacher-affect-literacy-mozambique.html.