Disparity in school children’s reading skills in 11 African countries

Huafeng Zhang; Stein T. Holden

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0320688

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionOctober 16, 2024
16 Oct 2024 Author Response https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320688.r001
14 Jan 2025 Decision Letter - Bijetri Bose, Editor PONE-D-24-45564Disparity in School Children's Reading Skills in 11 African CountriesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Zhang, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE and for your patience during the review process. I have now decided to proceed based on one referee report and my reading of the manuscript. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. The reviewer has some excellent suggestions to help improve the manuscript. There are two other issues I would like to mention: (1) In H2 and H3 you compare the percentages of school children with satisfactory basic reading skills in different groups or countries. However, your discussion of these results hints at causality. Please use caution in your interpretation of the results. (2) The choice of variables in Equation 1 needs justification. Noting the literature examining the determinants of a child's probability of taking the reading tests or other similar outcomes in Africa or developed countries would be useful. Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 28 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Bijetri Bose Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal requirements: 1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Thank you for uploading your study's underlying data set. Unfortunately, the repository you have noted in your Data Availability statement does not qualify as an acceptable data repository according to PLOS's standards. At this time, please upload the minimal data set necessary to replicate your study's findings to a stable, public repository (such as figshare or Dryad) and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers that may be used to access these data. For a list of recommended repositories and additional information on PLOS standards for data deposition, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories . 3. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. 4. We note that you have referenced (28. Taylor S, Yu D. The importance of socio-economic status in determining educational achievement in South Africa. Unpublished working paper (Economics) Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University. 2009:33-47. [Cited 2024 Oct 4]. Available from: https://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2009/wp012009/wp-01-2009.pdf ) which has currently not yet been accepted for publication. Please remove this from your References and amend this to state in the body of your manuscript: (ie “Bewick et al. [Unpublished]”) as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-reference-style Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: 1. Summary of the research and overall impression This manuscript provides new evidence of children’s reading skills in 11 African countries making use of Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) data, paying particular attention to variation in reading skills by socio-economic status and urban/rural location within countries. The manuscript also considers gaps in reading skills among children with disabilities, an under-researched topic in the African context. This is an important contribution to the literature, as alarm over poor overall reading achievement levels on the continent often dwarfs evidence of variability in reading skills within countries. The fact that the manuscript makes use of nationally representative data from six countries is a particular strength. A major limitation is that the study considers only children who are enrolled in school. This is particularly concerning when making cross-country comparisons since enrolment rates differ markedly across countries. The authors acknowledge this, and make clear that their results are only representative of children enrolled in school. Another major limitation is that floor effects might be driving the result that between-group differences are larger in countries with higher overall levels of achievement. This may be of particular concern in the African context, where sometimes 10-year-old children are unable to read a single word correctly. This limitation should be acknowledged. Overall, the paper makes an important contribution to our understanding of differences in reading levels across different groups within countries on the African continent. My recommendation is to Accept with Major Revisions. 2. Discussion of specific areas for improvement Major comments: 1. Introduction: The introduction should include a discussion of the existing literature on the topic. 2. Methodology: It is not clear why the authors use the proportion of learners achieving a specific percentage on the reading test as their outcome variable. They argue that the reason for this is the extreme values on the reading test score. Why would extreme values be a problem for estimating your coefficients of interest? I suggest sticking to a continuous variable of reading test scores. 3. Discussion: The authors highlight the finding that many children have very low reading scores, but this is not discussed in the text where the table showing that information appears. I would suggest highlighting that early on, in the discussion of the results in Table 3. I would also compare how learners in different groups compare across countries, as the authors compare CWD in one country to CWOD in other countries. For example, it would be nice to say “children in the lowest wealth quintile in Ghana outperform children in the top four wealth quintiles in the DRC”. Minor comments: 1. Consider treating “children with disabilities” as a separate category, rather than lumping them together with “children from disadvantaged backgrounds”. Conceptually having a disability is very different from being from a disadvantaged background. I agree that these children are disadvantaged, but it is not their background that is disadvantaged. 2. The conclusion that “children with disabilities benefit from strong educational systems as much as children without disabilities in terms of improving their basic reading skills” does not follow from the result that children with disabilities in better-performing countries outperform children without disabilities in other countries. Rather, is suggests that strengthening education systems is a promising way of improving the reading skills of children with disabilities. 3. Use of the word “non-poor”. Operationalising poverty as being in the bottom quintile of the asset index means the proportions of “non-poor” are going to be 80% in each country by design. This might be misleading, as one would be hard pressed to argue that e.g. only 20% of people in Zimbabwe are poor. 4. Use of the word “improvements” to refer to higher country-level reading achievement. Improvements imply a change over time. I suggest rather using the phrasing “whether disadvantaged children benefit equally from attending school in countries with higher overall levels of reading achievement”. 5. Page 8: “The fundamental question revolves around whether CWD, when raised in families with a more advantageous social background (urban residence, higher income, higher education), can successfully bridge the academic performance gap compared to CWOD.” I don’t think this should be framed as the fundamental question. It is an important question, but is not set up as the main question in the rest of the paper. 6. Page 9: “Comprehensive” test should be comprehension test. The fact that the test is a oral reading fluency test followed by a comprehension test should be made clear (at the moment it is not clear before the third sentence in the second paragraph whether the story is read by an enumerator or the learner themselves (i.e. whether it is a listening comprehension test or a reading comprehension test). 7. Figures: a. Figure 1: I strongly suggest ordering the countries by overall reading performance. This will help the reader to see that the size of the gaps between the categories are related to overall levels of reading performance in a country. 8. Consider re-structuring the conclusion. At present the discussion jumps between the findings related to disabilities in paragraph 1 to the findings related to differences between social groups in paragraph 2 back to disabilities in paragraph 3. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy . Reviewer #1: Yes: Heleen Hofmeyr ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/ . PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org . Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320688.r002
Revision 1
29 Jan 2025 Author Response Response to Reviewer Thank you for the constructive comments on the paper. We have carefully revised the manuscript in response to your feedback. Below, we outline the changes we made during the revision process: Two issues raised by academic editor: (1) In H2 and H3 you compare the percentages of school children with satisfactory basic reading skills in different groups or countries. However, your discussion of these results hints at causality. Please use caution in your interpretation of the results. Thank you for pointing that out. We have revised the manuscript, especially the conclusion section to ensure that the results are not hinted at causality but consistently presented as comparisons across groups or countries. (2) The choice of variables in Equation 1 needs justification. Noting the literature examining the determinants of a child's probability of taking the reading tests or other similar outcomes in Africa or developed countries would be useful. The discussion and relevant literature regarding the selection of control variables in Equation 1 have been added to Section 3.3. Reviewer Comments: Reviewer #1: 1. Summary of the research and overall impression This manuscript provides new evidence of children’s reading skills in 11 African countries making use of Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) data, paying particular attention to variation in reading skills by socio-economic status and urban/rural location within countries. The manuscript also considers gaps in reading skills among children with disabilities, an under-researched topic in the African context. This is an important contribution to the literature, as alarm over poor overall reading achievement levels on the continent often dwarfs evidence of variability in reading skills within countries. The fact that the manuscript makes use of nationally representative data from six countries is a particular strength. A major limitation is that the study considers only children who are enrolled in school. This is particularly concerning when making cross-country comparisons since enrolment rates differ markedly across countries. The authors acknowledge this, and make clear that their results are only representative of children enrolled in school. Another major limitation is that floor effects might be driving the result that between-group differences are larger in countries with higher overall levels of achievement. This may be of particular concern in the African context, where sometimes 10-year-old children are unable to read a single word correctly. This limitation should be acknowledged. The limitation related to floor effects is now addressed in Section 5.2, "Study Limitations," as part of the discussion on the constraints associated with the reading test. Overall, the paper makes an important contribution to our understanding of differences in reading levels across different groups within countries on the African continent. My recommendation is to Accept with Major Revisions. 2. Discussion of specific areas for improvement Major comments: 1. Introduction: The introduction should include a discussion of the existing literature on the topic. The existing literature on the topic is limited, as most similar studies have been conducted in developed contexts. However, we identified a few relevant cross-country comparative studies in African contexts, and the discussion of these studies has been incorporated into the introduction section. 2. Methodology: It is not clear why the authors use the proportion of learners achieving a specific percentage on the reading test as their outcome variable. They argue that the reason for this is the extreme values on the reading test score. Why would extreme values be a problem for estimating your coefficients of interest? I suggest sticking to a continuous variable of reading test scores. Thank you for highlighting this. A discussion on the selection of the outcome variable has now been added to Section 3.1 (Data Description). Additionally, as suggested by the reviewer, we conducted the analysis using continuous reading test scores as outcome variables for all three hypotheses. The results of these analyses are presented in supplementary tables S2.3, S2.5, and S2.7 as part of the sensitivity tests, demonstrating that the choice of outcome variables does not alter the conclusions of this paper. 3. Discussion: The authors highlight the finding that many children have very low reading scores, but this is not discussed in the text where the table showing that information appears. I would suggest highlighting that early on, in the discussion of the results in Table 3. I would also compare how learners in different groups compare across countries, as the authors compare CWD in one country to CWOD in other countries. For example, it would be nice to say “children in the lowest wealth quintile in Ghana outperform children in the top four wealth quintiles in the DRC”. Thank you for these valuable suggestions. The discussion of low reading scores has been integrated into the results section corresponding to Table 3. Additionally, a comparison has been made between children in the lowest wealth quintile from several mid-proficiency countries and those in higher wealth quintiles in low-proficiency countries, highlighting the significance of cross-country differences. Minor comments: 1. Consider treating “children with disabilities” as a separate category, rather than lumping them together with “children from disadvantaged backgrounds”. Conceptually having a disability is very different from being from a disadvantaged background. I agree that these children are disadvantaged, but it is not their background that is disadvantaged. Children with disabilities and children from other disadvantaged backgrounds are now distinctly addressed throughout the paper to ensure clarity and differentiation in the analysis and discussion. 2. The conclusion that “children with disabilities benefit from strong educational systems as much as children without disabilities in terms of improving their basic reading skills” does not follow from the result that children with disabilities in better-performing countries outperform children without disabilities in other countries. Rather, is suggests that strengthening education systems is a promising way of improving the reading skills of children with disabilities. Thank you for the comment. The revision has been made as per the reviewer’s suggestion. 3. Use of the word “non-poor”. Operationalising poverty as being in the bottom quintile of the asset index means the proportions of “non-poor” are going to be 80% in each country by design. This might be misleading, as one would be hard pressed to argue that e.g. only 20% of people in Zimbabwe are poor. Thank you for the suggestion. The terms "children from families in the lowest quintile of asset index" and "those from the four upper quintiles" are now used throughout the paper instead of "poor" and "non-poor" families. 4. Use of the word “improvements” to refer to higher country-level reading achievement. Improvements imply a change over time. I suggest rather using the phrasing “whether disadvantaged children benefit equally from attending school in countries with higher overall levels of reading achievement”. Thank you for the valuable feedback. We fully agree with the reviewer’s point, and the term “improvements” has been replaced with more precise wording throughout the discussions. 5. Page 8: “The fundamental question revolves around whether CWD, when raised in families with a more advantageous social background (urban residence, higher income, higher education), can successfully bridge the academic performance gap compared to CWOD.” I don’t think this should be framed as the fundamental question. It is an important question, but is not set up as the main question in the rest of the paper. Agree, “fundamental” is replaced in the text. 6. Page 9: “Comprehensive” test should be comprehension test. The fact that the test is a oral reading fluency test followed by a comprehension test should be made clear (at the moment it is not clear before the third sentence in the second paragraph whether the story is read by an enumerator or the learner themselves (i.e. whether it is a listening comprehension test or a reading comprehension test). The term “comprehensive test” has been revised for clarity, and additional details have been included to explain how the reading test is conducted. 7. Figures: a. Figure 1: I strongly suggest ordering the countries by overall reading performance. This will help the reader to see that the size of the gaps between the categories are related to overall levels of reading performance in a country. Fig 1 has been revised to ensure that the countries are now ordered by overall reading performance, providing a clearer visual representation of the data. 8. Consider re-structuring the conclusion. At present the discussion jumps between the findings related to disabilities in paragraph 1 to the findings related to differences between social groups in paragraph 2 back to disabilities in paragraph 3. Thank you for the suggestion. The conclusion has been restructured accordingly, with findings related to differences between social groups discussed first, followed by discussions on disabilities, to improve clarity and flow. While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. The figures have been uploaded to PACE tool to make it sure that they meet PLOS requirements. Journal requirements: 1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf We have carefully reviewed the style requirements outlined in the templates and revised the manuscript to ensure it aligns with PLOS ONE's formatting and style guidelines. 2. Thank you for uploading your study's underlying data set. Unfortunately, the repository you have noted in your Data Availability statement does not qualify as an acceptable data repository according to PLOS's standards. At this time, please upload the minimal data set necessary to replicate your study's findings to a stable, public repository (such as figshare or Dryad) and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers that may be used to access these data. For a list of recommended repositories and additional information on PLOS standards for data deposition, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. The user data file and syntax have been uploaded to figshare and here is DOI that can be used to access the data used in the analysis: DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.28246769 3. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. The ethics statement is now in Section 3.2 “Ethics Methods” 4. We note that you have referenced (28. Taylor S, Yu D. The importance of socio-economic status in determining educational achievement in South Africa. Unpublished working paper (Economics) Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University. 2009:33-47. [Cited 2024 Oct 4]. Available from: https://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2009/wp012009/wp-01-2009.pdf) which has currently not yet been accepted for publication. Please remove this from your References and amend this to state in the body of your manuscript: (ie “Bewick et al. [Unpublished]”) as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-reference-style The unpublished working paper has been deleted from the reference list and revised in the body of the manuscript. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewer.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320688.r003
23 Feb 2025 Decision Letter - Bijetri Bose, Editor Disparity in School Children's Reading Skills in 11 African Countries PONE-D-24-45564R1 Dear Dr. Zhang, Thank you for your patience. We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Bijetri Bose Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320688.r004
Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Bijetri Bose, Editor PONE-D-24-45564R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Zhang, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Bijetri Bose Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320688.r005

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