Abstract
In Bangladesh, very low percentage of pupil achieve the desired competency in the Bangla language in early grades of primary schools (National Student Assessment, 2013). Reid (1998) noted that there is 90% probability that a child will remain a poor reader at the end of the fourth grade if the child is a poor reader at the end of the first grade. For this reason, a lot of students in Bangladesh fall behind the class, and, as a result do not realize the benefits of class, become reluctant to go to the class, and drop out. In order to improve student retention, developing early grade reading competence among the students is imperative. Fortunately, Reid (1998) also observed that 90%-95% of poor readers can reach average reading skills with early intervention. Learning to read affects all aspects of children’s education. By ensuring a strong foundation at the beginning of school, the expectation is that fewer children will repeat grades or drop out in the primary cycle, and a higher proportion will complete school with solid primary school skills – such as literacy – which are critical life skills in today’s world. This research study will focus on two areas such as 1) proving reading comprehension through different supplementary reading materials beside usual text; 2) how reading enhancement and availability of reading material improve retention.
Keywords: reading, quantitative research, student retention
Reading Enhancement in Government Primary Schools to
Improve Student Retention in Early Grade
Bangladesh has one of the largest primary education systems in the world with an estimated 18 million primary school aged children (6 to10 years) and 320,000 teachers in more than 78,000 schools (UNICEF, n. d.). In the last decade, Bangladesh made great strides in improving access to education however quality remains a challenge. But Primary education of
Bangladesh is failing to meet the learning needs of its mixed ability students. Besides, lack of infrastructural facilities, the traditional teaching learning process also remain as a great barrier in student retention in the classroom and next grade. The National Student Assessment (NSA) program is a continuation of the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education (MoPME) initiative to evaluate the outcomes of primary education in Bangladesh and draw implications for improvements in teaching and learning. A key function of this large scale national assessment program is to provide data to inform policy and plan educational reforms to improve student achievement. Bangladesh has taken several positive initiatives to improve access to primary education, driven by strong government leadership and successful partnerships among government, donors and NGOs. This has been reflected in the Third Primary Education Development Program (PEDP3).
Despite this huge success in educational access, the government’s National Student Assessment findings in 2013 point to weak Bangla language competency in grades 3 and 5. The findings also show that Bangla competency, including reading skill, decreases from third grade to fifth grade. Only 8% of 3rd grade students and 25% of 5th grade students scored 80% of higher in Bangla language competencies, including vocabulary, writing and reading comprehension (Monitoring & Evaluation Division Directorate of Primary Education Ministry of Primary & Mass Education, 2013). This report shows a host of school related challenges, including lack of teacher preparation, lack of well-designed reading materials for children in schools and homes, limited contact hours in schools, few opportunities to practice reading inside and outside school, little value placed on reading for pleasure, and lack of both time and interventions for children struggling to learn how to read. This triggers failure in the classroom learning due to a weak foundation and the lacking in reading skills. The importance of reading to all of education and to knowledge economies cannot be overstated. By ensuring strong reading skills in early grades, the expectation is that fewer children will repeat grades or dropouts in primary schools and the learning outcome will rise.
The Government of Bangladesh’s (GOB) Third Primary Education Development Plan (PEDP3) provides a comprehensive framework to address these challenges to improve early grade reading competence. This states that learning to read affects all aspects of children’s education and a higher proportion will hopefully complete school with solid primary school skills – such as literacy – which are critical life skills in today’s world.
Research Questions
A report by Read Bangladesh “Libraries, Literacy and Technology: empowering children with reading and digital literacy skills” states that, there has been well developed market of early grade children’s books in Bangladesh. However, parents in some respect schools cannot realize the societal benefits of reading supplementary materials beside usual text books because they perceive that exam results depend on memorization of the textbook. But reading a range of new and unknown text supports authentic reading comprehension. Not only in Bangladesh, findings of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that in 2009, all 65 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) faced sizable proportions of students functioning below the baseline level of proficiency (OECD, 2010). In a survey of reading attitudes in the United States, McKenna et al. (1995) found that the gap in attitudes between good and poor readers widened steadily from grade 1 to grade 6. Such studies indicated that the relationship between reading and achievement is complex and, with the frustration associated with poor reading contributing to worsening performance in the class. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to explore how reading enhancement in early grades improve student retention in the same and later grades. The key objectives of the study are:
i) To identify the status of reading enhancement facilitates/ activities relating to pupil learning achievement in grade 5.
ii) To investigate how increased reading competencies among early grades in primary schools help achieve fewer drop outs.
Methods
To study the effect of reading enhancement in student retention, a pretest-posttest control group design will be used.
Participants
Sixteen Government Primary Schools (GPS) from 8 divisions in Bangladesh will take part in this study. Random sampling method will be used to draw the schools and their grade 5 children for participation. Schools from the same division will be considered as clusters. A semi structured questionnaire will be used for grade 5 students to break the ice and make a rapport with the respondents about their current practice in reading. There will be another questionnaire for the school administration to look into the data of the retention rate in the past 5 years. The questionnaire will be pretested to check that the formulation and functionality serves the purpose. A face to face, one-on-one interview procedure with the school administration will be followed. Consent will be sought from the head teachers and children’s consent will be sought before the interview.
Measures
There will be a baseline survey as the pretest before any intervention is implemented. Before the data collection there will be training for data collectors such as Field Research Assistants and Field Research Supervisors, and a field test will be conducted to finalize the questionnaire and reading enhancement treatment at the end of the training. As reading enhancement, supplementary reading material instruction will be followed by the UNICEF. UNICEF has reading books which is free distributed in UNICEF clustered schools. Permission will be taken to use those reading materials in these schools as well.
As the study area is scattered countrywide. Da
ta collection will be taken place in 16 government primary schools (GPS) across 8 divisions (2 GPS from each division) of Bangladesh. From each school in division, there will be 1 control group school and 1treatment group school. Children and teachers of grade 5 present in their class room during the data collection will be recruited in the study. Children absent or unwilling to participate will be excluded from the study.
Design and construction of the control group
One school from each division will be the control group school of the study. Therefore, there will be 8 schools in control group and 8 schools in treatment group in 8 divisions of Bangladesh. To promote the participation of the schools, they will be given suggestions on supplementary reading materials beside usual studies. As reading enhancement, supplementary reading materials, instructions will be followed by the UNICEF. UNICEF has reading books which is free distributed in UNICEF clustered schools. Permission will be taken to use those reading materials in these schools as well. This study will focus on the fifth grade. In order to have the control and treatment group separate different shifts of the same grade of the same school was not selected as there are chances of sharing knowledge and techniques. From this pool, we will select those groups that are the most similar to the groups in our treatment condition. Because the study intends to take a number of group-level characteristics into account through propensity score matching approach (Kelcey, 2011; Rosenbaum & Rubin, 1984). This approach will ensure that, the variables used in the propensity score are sufficiently balanced when comparing the control and treatment condition (Rosenbaum, 2009).
Proposed Data Analyses
In order to assess the student retention and reading comprehension, data analysis of this study will focus on tendency; propensity scores (Thoemmes, 2012). In this analysis, it will be investigated whether the reading enhancement could significantly improve retention in in the class and next grade admission. Data will be analyzed from pretest status of the reading activities of the control group and treatment group of almost same kind. Then year-end retention data and admission in the next grade will define the desired output data. Semi structured interview questions will be quantified and analyzed to predict the role of reading enhancement on student retention.