{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,17]],"date-time":"2026-06-17T16:53:18Z","timestamp":1781715198268,"version":"3.54.5"},"reference-count":56,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,8]],"date-time":"2025-04-08T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1744070400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100005416","name":"Norges Forskningsr\u00e5d","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["300635"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["300635"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100005416","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.plosone.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS ONE"],"abstract":"<jats:p>To promote SDG Goal 4 and \u201ceducation for all\u201d, this study investigates children\u2019s basic reading skills in 11 low-income and lower-middle-income African countries, using standardized reading tests from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS). Research specifically examining children\u2019s reading skills and disparities across socioeconomic groups in African contexts remains scarce. This study addresses a critical knowledge gap by providing comparative evidence on reading skills disparities across diverse social backgrounds, including children with disabilities. Our study provides new evidence on the \u201cLearning Crisis in the Global South\u201d, revealing alarmingly low levels of reading skills but with considerable variation across the 11 African countries studied. Substantial reading skills differences exist between children with disabilities or from disadvantaged backgrounds\u2014those living in rural areas, and from poorer, less educated families\u2014and their non-disabled and non-disadvantaged peers. Notably, these disparities are often more pronounced in countries with higher overall reading proficiency. Moreover, there are persistent gaps between children with and without disabilities across the countries and socioeconomic groups in this study. Encouragingly, strengthening education systems is a promising way of improving the reading skills of children with disabilities. These findings underscore the diverse challenges faced by children from different backgrounds in varying contexts.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0320688","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,8]],"date-time":"2025-04-08T18:06:40Z","timestamp":1744135600000},"page":"e0320688","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Disparity in school children\u2019s reading skills in 11 African countries"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2794-1807","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Huafeng","family":"Zhang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7502-2392","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Stein T.","family":"Holden","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,8]]},"reference":[{"key":"pone.0320688.ref001","volume-title":"Sustainable Development Goals","author":"UN.","year":"2015"},{"key":"pone.0320688.ref002","article-title":"Human development for everyone.","volume-title":"Human Development Report 2016","author":"UNDP"},{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0320688.ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"13","DOI":"10.1093\/jae\/ejaa009","article-title":"Education in Africa: What are we learning?","volume":"30","author":"D Evans","year":"2021","journal-title":"J. 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Evidence from 40 countries","volume":"14","author":"E Lewis","year":"2022","journal-title":"Sustainability"},{"issue":"7","key":"pone.0320688.ref046","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"e649","DOI":"10.1016\/S2214-109X(17)30207-3","article-title":"Counting disability: emerging consensus on the Washington Group questionnaire","volume":"5","author":"NE Groce","year":"2017","journal-title":"Lancet Glob Health"},{"key":"pone.0320688.ref047","author":"WG.","year":"2020"},{"key":"pone.0320688.ref048","unstructured":"Five functional domains for behavioural and psychological disabilities: accepting change, controlling behaviour, making friends, anxiety, and depression, are not included since their prevalence rates across the countries vary greatly. It might indicate a large disparity in interpreting these functional domains in the local context. We classify vision disability as severe difficulty (cannot at all or a lot of difficulty) in vision even with glasses or contact lenses, hearing disability as severe difficulty in hearing even with a hearing aid, physical disability as severe difficulty in self-care or walking 500 meters on level ground without equipment or assistance, and intellectual disability as severe difficulties in communication, learning, remembering, or concentrating on activities that the child enjoys doing. Finally, those who reported more than one co-occurring severe functional difficulty are categorized as having multiple disabilities."},{"key":"pone.0320688.ref049","unstructured":"MICS survey reading tests mainly use same text with primary official teaching languages in these countries, which are English in The Gambia, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, and Zimbabwe; French in Central African Republic, Chad, DRCongo, Madagascar, Togo, and Tunisia. The story is same across all countries, but total number of words vary depending on the language used."},{"key":"pone.0320688.ref050","unstructured":"In Malawi and Zimbabwe, some children whose main teaching language is local language only did a reading test for local language."},{"issue":"4","key":"pone.0320688.ref051","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"445","DOI":"10.1037\/amp0000356","article-title":"Gender differences in reading and writing achievement: Evidence from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)","volume":"74","author":"D Reilly","year":"2019","journal-title":"Am Psychol"},{"key":"pone.0320688.ref052","first-page":"84","article-title":"Child labor in Africa and Asia: Household and context determinants of hours worked in paid labor by young children in 16 low-income countries","volume":"27","author":"E Webbink","year":"2015","journal-title":"Eur. J.\u00a0Dev.\u00a0Res"},{"key":"pone.0320688.ref053","volume-title":"Economic growth and child labor in low income economies. A Systhesis Paper Prepared for IZA\/DFID","author":"EV Edmonds","year":"2015"},{"key":"pone.0320688.ref054","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"73","DOI":"10.1007\/s11205-020-02594-3","article-title":"The construction of an asset index at household level and measurement of economic disparities in Punjab (Pakistan) by using MICS-micro data","volume":"155","author":"TA Naveed","year":"2021","journal-title":"Soc.\u00a0Indic.\u00a0Res"},{"key":"pone.0320688.ref055","unstructured":"Note that IPW cannot adjust the bias if the bias is related with other characteristics that we do not have information on."},{"key":"pone.0320688.ref056","unstructured":"The coefficient for children with multiple disabilities become insignificant when more control variables included. The sample size is quite limited due to the very low school attendance in this group of children, which may lead to high standard error."}],"container-title":["PLOS ONE"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/dx.plos.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0320688","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,8]],"date-time":"2025-04-08T18:07:39Z","timestamp":1744135659000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/dx.plos.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0320688"}},"subtitle":[],"editor":[{"given":"Bijetri","family":"Bose","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"editor"}]}],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,8]]},"references-count":56,"journal-issue":{"issue":"4","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,8]]}},"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0320688","relation":{},"ISSN":["1932-6203"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1932-6203","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,8]]}}}