Children’s home environment and the impact on literacy in Africa

At the ISSBD conference (see earlier post) Damaris Ngorosho, from the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania presented an invited paper titled “Phonological awareness and reading and writing ability: The importance of home environment factors in a rural community in Tanzania”.
She assessed the phonological awareness and reading skills (in Kiswahili) of 75 grade 2 children (aged 8-10 years old) in rural Tanzania and collected information on their home learning environment. Here are some of the findings that I found to be very interesting (and representative of what I saw in the villages in Zambia):

• Books in the home: 64.0% had no books, 30.7% had 1-2 books, 5.3% had 3+ books
• Pens in the home: 43.5% had no pens, 34.7% had one pen, 20.0% had 2+ pens
• Homes: most had poles/mud walls, grass/coconut roofs, and sand floors
• Water: 77% used a neighbourhood tap
• Lighting: 55% used a locally made lamp, 13% used electricity
• Fuel: 76% used firewood
• Furniture: 78% of homes had not enough beds for the number of people living there.

She also found that parental education level was a strong predictor of children’s reading and writing ability.