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Holistic Education School located in Mumbai, India, created a strategic improvement plan to address the poor foundational reading skills of its kindergarten students. Curriculum Based Measure (CBM) assessment data showed a rise in reading performance during the implementation of the plan, from 87% of the students scoring below grade level in 2016 to 89% achieving grade level benchmarks in 2021. An instrumental case study qualitative research design was employed to describe the nature of changes made in relation to the increase in performance. Data were collected from a variety of sources and coded through inductive and deductive processes that achieved intercoder agreement of 97.87% and 0.73 Kappa coefficient for reliability. Triangulation, member checking, and clarifying researcher bias, were employed to maximize validity. The findings describe the nature of transformation undertaken by the strategic improvement plan on key systems-level elements like curriculum, professional development, student engagement, parent engagement, and school leadership.

There is an urgent need for consensus around the matter of screen time (ST) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some governments announced restrictions for online schooling time per day to protect students from perceived risks of prolonged screen-use, but critics and an emerging body of research question such regulations. Our review of 52 empirical studies found (a) an overwhelming majority of literature shows effect sizes too small to be of practical or clinical significance, and (b) findings more specifically on educational ST are inconclusive and critically underrepresented. These facts, along with the undeniable benefits of online learning in the absence of brick-and-mortar schooling and the ominous forecasts of learning loss caused by prolonged school closure, inform our recommendations for a more moderate policy and practical stance on restrictions - one that is focused on responsibly leveraging the educational and social benefits of ST in a world still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Most private schools in India follow the Alphabet-Spelling method to teach reading in English. This approach bypasses letter-sound correspondences and focuses on rote memorization and sight-word recognition. In an effort to provide students with more recent evidence-based practices in reading instruction, this study examined how phonics-based instruction related with early English literacy outcomes for students in kindergarten. Our sample consisted of 627 students attending a private middle-cost school in Mumbai, India where the language of instruction was English. Students were tested for early literacy skills in kindergarten using the DIBELSNext benchmarking measures. We compared groups of students who received no phonics (n = 165) to students who received one year of phonics (n = 234) and students who received two years of phonics (n = 228) respectively. Our results suggested that students who received both one and two years of phonics instruction in preschool significantly outperformed those who did not receive any phonics instruction on all the literacy skills assessed. Moreover, the incidence of students being at-risk for reading difficulties reduced significantly with an increase in years of phonics instruction. Implications for reading research, practice, and policy in the Indian context are discussed.