Books for Every Child: Ensuring Access to Quality Books for All

A Markets-Based Approach to Ending Illiteracy

More than 617 million children and youth are not reaching minimum proficiency in reading. Children cannot learn if they cannot read, and they cannot read if they do not have books in languages that they understand. This generation’s youth deserve the opportunity to gain the skills they need—including reading—to positively shape their families, communities, and societies. Despite their importance, books are absent, in short supply, or are otherwise inaccessible for millions of children—we call this the Book Gap.

Ensuring all children can read by 2030 will require a commitment by the international community to transform and strengthen the entire book chain, including: forecasting and planning, title development, publishing and printing, procurement and purchasing, distribution management, and active use. This toolkit provides resources for market based approaches to ending literacy.  

Globally, 367 million primary school-aged children do not possess the basic reading skills necessary to thrive in society. Alarmingly, two-thirds of the children who are not learning to read—some 262 million—are in school.

Studies have demonstrated the importance of high quality reading materials in supporting learning—a World Bank study even deemed textbooks one of the most cost-effective learning inputs, particularly when in the local language students understand, and in a class with an effective teacher. Despite their importance, books are absent or in short supply in far too many classrooms globally. 

No single intervention can address all the elements needed for a functioning market.

Launched in 2018, the Global Book Alliance (GBA) was formed to put into action lessons gleaned from a feasibility study that assessed the challenges and opportunities for impact to address the global shortage of high quality children’s books in underserved languages. A major theme of the study was the application of a market shaping approach to improve the book supply chain. GBA’s “Book Chain” approach was developed with this in mind. The founding members of the Global Book Alliance now compose the GBA steering committee.

The Book Gap Is a Lack of Level-Appropriate Books in Languages Children Use and Understand

The reasons for the book gap are varied, and there are challenges across the book chain.

There Are Not Enough High Quality Books

In low- and middle-income countries, there is an inadequate supply of titles. Not only are there not enough physical books, but not enough authors and publishers are producing stories in languages children use and understand. A 2016 study found that in Malawi, there are approximately 2.2 million native speakers of Chitumbuka and another 2.2 million speakers of Chiyao. There are fewer than 20 reading book titles available in either language, leaving nearly 25 percent of Malawi’s population without the materials to support literacy.

Books Are Hard To Get

Inefficient and ineffective supply chains, as well as insufficient or inappropriate use of financing for procurement, further constrain the supply of books and increase the costs of provision. Across sub-Saharan Africa, book loss and damage is also a significant challenge. In Guinea, Niger, and Chad, research indicates that over 50 percent of books are lost in warehousing and transportation due to inadequate storage, insufficient transportation funding, and lack of overall planning.

Community-Wide Engagement is Needed

Teachers and parents lack the information and resources they need to support development of reading skills, keep students engaged and interested in reading books, and support community-wide reading activities such as libraries and reading camps.

CLOSE THE BOOK GAP 

An effective supply of books requires high-quality title development in languages and formats children can use and understand, access to those titles by printers and publishers, and a functioning supply chain to deliver books to their potential readers.

Forecasting and Planning 

Forecasting and planning refers to the recurring/cyclical work that is carried out by both governments and publishers to assess need and demand, and to arrange for the financial and material inputs required to meet that demand.

Title Development 

Title development refers to the creation (through authorship, commissioning, adaptation, or translation) of texts and books intended to support acquisition of reading skills in languages children use and understand. It involves authors, illustrators, editors, and reading specialists.

Publishing and Printing 

Publishing is the ownership, manipulation, management, licensure, and marketing of intellectual property, usually for profit. Printing is the reproduction of text. In some cases, publishers may also be printers.

Procurement and Purchasing 

Procurement is defined as acquiring (procuring) all of the goods, services, and work that an organization requires. In education, the largest procurer of books is often a host country government. In procurement, that government will select vendors, establish payments terms, negotiate contracts for per unit and print run prices for reading materials according to certain specifications and quality standards, and issue payment to purchase books. Procurement may involve non-standard financing models, such as the use of Advanced Market Commitments or purchasing consortia. In book markets, individual families or students may also be book consumers, and may purchase books depending on their ability to pay a per copy cost. 

Distribution Management 

Distribution Management is the organization, oversight, and activities involved in moving books from the point of origination to the point at which they are accessed by learners, including packaging, inventory, warehousing, and logistics.

Active Use 

Teachers and families often lack knowledge of the importance of reading practice and/or are unsure how to engage. It is common for parents and family members to be illiterate themselves. Furthermore, perverse incentives related to unstable book supplies or penalties for damage/loss may lead teachers to restrict children’s access to books. Delays in distribution may mean that teacher trainings do not include the books they will be expected to use in their classroom. Furthermore, where books are present, there are often too few books to allow for adequate use in classrooms.

By joining the Global Book Alliance, partners leverage our combined commitment to the goal of universal literacy.

Working with cross-sectoral partners, diverse skills and expertise can be utilized to repair the book chain.

An International, Multi-Stakeholder Partnership

• Convening, Creating, and Collaborating. Get involved in the GBA’s mission and engage at a global level in literacy and equity in early childhood education.
• Implementing, Impacting, and Inspiring. Work with us to test the GBA strategy, implement ideas and innovations, and understand how and what change can be fostered.
• Supporting, Sharing, and Sustaining. Build a long-term partnership with GBA to end illiteracy.

Invest in Partnership

• Support Market Research: Building and creating evidence for better literacy practices in international education.
• Mission Building and Structure: Ensuring sustainable governance, mission alignment, and reputation building.
• Country Pilots: Testing theories of change at a country level and sharing findings to improve education outcomes.

Work with Us to Close the Book Gap

Publishing and Printing

• Support Regional and National Publishing Collectives: Ensuring stronger publishing networks that can support local book markets.

Title Development

• Support authors and publishers in creating titles in new languages and relevant subject matter to use open licensing.

Distribution Management

• Ensure books get where they are needed efficiently with better supply chain and distribution using track and trace among other tools.

Active Use

• Partner with the Global Digital Library to create collections accessible to young readers everywhere.

Books for Every Child: A Global Pledge

Through the Global Book Alliance, the international community has committed to achieving universal literacy for the world’s learners by 2030. To reach this goal, we must ensure that learners have access to quality books. 

More than 617 million children and youth are not reaching minimum proficiency in reading. Children cannot learn if they cannot read, and they cannot read if they do not have books in languages that they understand. This generation’s youth deserve the opportunity to gain the skills they need—including reading—to positively shape their families, communities, and societies. Despite their importance, books are absent, in short supply, or are otherwise inaccessible for millions of children—we call this the book gap. 

Ensuring all children can read by 2030 will require a commitment by the international community to transform and strengthen the entire book chain, including: forecasting and planning, title development, publishing and printing, procurement and purchasing, distribution management, and active use. 

The GBA has four objectives to achieve by 2030:

• Increase the availability of quality children’s books in local languages and in print and digital formats;
• Increase access to quality children’s books at school, in the community, and at home;
• Improve use of books by children, teachers, parents, and caregivers;
• Improve knowledge and capacity of the global community and country-level stakeholders to strengthen the book supply chains and close the global book gap. 

The GBA 2021-2024 strategy outlines these objectives and the means by which these goals will be achieved over time. Join us in ensuring that all children have the books they need to learn to read and read to learn.

Books for Every Child: A Global Pledge

My Organization Pledges to Become a Partner of the Global Book Alliance

• We pledge to support the GBA’s vision for a world in which all children achieve literacy and have access to quality books in a language that they understand. 
• We pledge to uphold the GBA’s mission and work to transform the lives of millions of children by working with partners to identify, promote, and support innovations, best practices, and policies that will change the way books are created, procured, and provided. 
• We pledge to uphold the GBA’s objectives, to the best of our ability, through our policies, programs, activities, and practices. 
• We pledge to increase and improve our own efforts to ensure all children have books they need to learn how to read. 
• Together, we can achieve a world in which all children have access to quality books that they can use to learn to read, read to learn, and develop a love of reading. 

DOWNLOAD THE GBA PLEDGE