Parental, community and familial support for children’s literacy in developing countries

This systematic review by Spier and colleagues examines evidence on the effect of parental, familial and community support interventions to improve children’s literacy development. Educational television appears to have a positive effect on children’s pre-literacy skills, when children view these programmes three to five days per week over several months. Interventions that show parents how to support their children’s pre-literacy did not improve early literacy overall. However, programmes may be promising in some contexts. Peer-led tutoring improved early writing skills overall, but not other literacy outcomes. Since all of the results are based on a few studies, they should be interpreted with caution.