This paper investigates the effects of a Philippine educational programme aimed at improving reading skills among fourth-grade students. The study focuses on an intervention implemented in public schools by the Sa Aklat Sisikat (SAS) programme, a non-profit organization founded in 1999. The intervention provides books and teachers to organize a 31-day “read-a-thon,” during which children are invited to read as many books as possible. The programme provides 60 storybooks to every participating school, in both English and Filipino. These books are used during one-hour sessions held daily over the 31-day period. Specific uses including dramatic storytelling, literary games or individual silent reading. As of 2011, the intervention had reached approximately 150,000 students in more than 750 schools throughout the country.
The authors estimate the impact of the programme using a matched-pair randomised controlled design involving 100 elementary schools located in Tarlac province. Each school was matched with another school from the same district on the basis of average reading scores collected at baseline (July 2009). Within each pair, one school was randomly selected to receive the intervention and the other school was used as the control. Two follow-up surveys were conducted (in November/December 2009 and in February 2010) to collect information on children's reading habits and educational results in other subjects. In addition, the baseline survey gathered data on children's age, gender, height, weight, number of siblings, religion and dialect. The analysis uses a difference-in-differences model that includes a dummy variable indicating whether a school participated in the intervention, a dummy variable indicating whether a student is present in the follow-up data and an interaction term between these two variables.