The USAID in collaboration with the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Ghana Education Service (GES), has began an initiative to improve the reading ability of 2.8 million pupils by 2019.
Addressing a group of public relations officers of the MoE and GES at a workshop in Accra recently, Dr. Guitele Nicoleau, the Chief of Party for USAID’s Partnership for Education, urged teachers and other stakeholders in the education sector to support pupils to develop good reading habits.
“We are in partnership with MoE and GES to train 51,000 public basic school teachers in 165 districts in the country. It is a five-year project and we’ve been engaging teachers, education directors, academics and stakeholders to help improve the performance of kindergarten to primary three pupils in reading,” she said.
Dr. Nicoleau said other activities being held include reading festivals, interactive reading demonstrations and spelling bees in schools saying “we need your support as relevant stakeholders to make this project successful.”
She said the agency intends to support the production of about 4,230,000 supplementary readers in Ghanaian Languages and English Language to beneficiary schools in the country.
“USAID aims at supporting the GES to provide special training to 25,200 teachers on improving reading habits of pupils”, she said.
Rev. Jonathan Bettey, Head of the Public Relations Unit of the GES, appealed to his colleagues to help in disseminating all policies and programmes aimed at quality education delivery in the country.
A report by the Early Grade Reading Assessment (2014) revealed that only 2 per cent of primary pupils could read English or any local language properly.
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Source: GNA