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This Guidance Note is designed to support government and World Bank teams in preparing accurate and complete bidding documents for books, evaluating proposals, and awarding contracts.

Access to books (textbooks, teacher’s guides, and materials for reading practice) is key to addressing learning poverty. Children need to be exposed to sufficient and appropriate text, and they need to be afforded the time and opportunity to practice reading in school and at home. Appropriate design of reading books will facilitate learning, support instruction, and promote independent learning.

Education projects funded by The World Bank procure textbooks and other teaching and learning materials through national and international tenders (bids). Documents for the tenders describe the purposes of the procurement, the qualification requirements for potential bidders, and the technical specifications of the education materials to be procured.

The World Bank’s Read@Home initiative is an unprecedented effort to get reading, learning, and play materials into homes to address the learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread, pre-existing "learning poverty". Connected to the distribution and use of these materials is the question of copyright.

This Guidance Note was created for the Read@Home project to help writers, illustrators, and designers create books for young children to share with their families at home. Of course, such books may be used in schools as well. In either case, these will be enjoyable books that children will want to read, so they will learn to love reading and develop the life-long habit of reading.  

The Incoterms rules have become an essential part of the daily language of trade.

This Guide to Open Licensing in World Bank Projects provides an explanation of open licensing and how to use it in World Bank and other development projects to increase access to high-quality teaching and learning materials, including textbooks and storybooks.

This note outlines the World Bank’s Read@Home initiative’s recommendations for a “first collection” of children’s
literature. It is intended for Read@Home and other early reading programs involved in the development and/or
selection of books to support children’s pre-reading and early reading skills.