New five-year Strategic Plan to guide literacy improvement – Education Minister

Sep 10, 2014 News

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Guided by a five-year Strategic Plan, the Ministry of Education is well on its way to ensuring that all children attending school will be literate by Grade Four. But according to Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, since her Ministry is cognisant of the fact that it cannot work alone to achieve the desired results, efforts are being made to solicit the support of other stakeholders.

It is for this reason that the Ministry has embraced the theme “Literate by Grade Four through consistent home, school and community involvement” as it celebrates Education Month. The Education Month observances commenced on September 1 and will culminate on October 5.
Speaking at a forum on Monday to launch a strategic literacy programme, Minister Manickchand disclosed that a crucial outcome the Strategic Plan is expected to help realise is that of stakeholders’ alliance and support towards the improvement of the level of literacy. And according to her, too, measures will be put in place to monitor and track the progress of efforts in this regard.
In fact the Minister disclosed that once all needful measures are implemented “the monitoring aspect of our teachers and pupils will be seriously tightened so that we can measure whether there is satisfactory growth…”
Every school will therefore be required to have in place a school improvement plan with a literacy component, and, according to the Minister, literacy communities will be established in every school to assess performances of pupils and devise strategies for improvement.
Moreover, an accountability framework will be implemented to assess class performance of teachers, and Minister Manickchand made it clear that based on the findings “appropriate action will be taken, one way or the other.”
She pointed out that as part of the efforts to ascertain whether progress is being made, diagnostic assessments will be conducted with each pupil, nationally, to determine their literacy level, with a view to developing appropriate plans of actions for remediation.
Manickchand informed too that ‘action research’ in classrooms will be conducted to determine issues affecting pupils in order to resolve any that are uncovered. She disclosed that District Education Officers will be given a monitoring checklist to effectively supervise the literacy programmes of schools.
“These are some of the initiatives that will be taken over the next five years…it is a small component of a much larger plan to ensure that our children are literate by Grade Four.”
As part of the measures to ensure that the Ministry is on the right track, the Minister said that the Strategic Plan has components in place that will see the establishment of reading tents and centres across the country, where public officials and representatives of Faith-Based and Non-Governmental Organisations can read in order to stimulate children’s interest in reading. This venture is one that is set to be introduced in the very near future, according to the Minister, who went on to inform that the Ministry will also be looking to raise literacy awareness via television, radio, text messaging and even Facebook.
But the focus will not only be on children, the Minister intimated, as she pointed out that classes for parents with reading difficulties will be organised in order to fully get their support, too, to help bring the country’s children to the place they need to be in terms of literacy.
Added to this, Manickchand said that resource materials will be given to parents that outline how they can help enhance the ability of their children.
In its literacy improvement quest, the Education Minister said that the Ministry will also be working with the wider society to create literacy-friendly environments. Moreover, she noted that the Ministry will be relying on business organisations, clinics, Government agencies and managers of public places to create such environments by displaying alphabet and vowel charts as well as reading materials, all intended to help encourage reading among children.
Added to this, reading clubs and libraries will be established at every school and deliberate moves will be made to utilise locally produced readers such as the Roraima Readers for the Nursery level and the Atlantic Readers for primary level.
These readers are expected to be especially effective since, according to Minister Manickchand, they fully embrace established literacy standards and guidelines.
Of interest, too, is the fact that the Ministry’s Strategic Plan speaks to the creation of learning packages for absentee children with a view of ensuring that they can catch-up on classes that they would have missed.
Based on a recently completed study conducted by the Education Ministry, only 32 per cent of pupils are currently able to read at Grade Level, a daunting trend that the Ministry is strategically battling to reverse.
Minister Manickchand said that efforts will even be directed at improving teachers’ capacity to implement effective literacy programmes.
“Under this we will ensure that there is massive training and re-training of teachers to deliver literacy programmes countrywide,” said the Education Minister as she informed that even Head Teachers will be trained as Instructional Leaders so that they will be able to better guide their teachers in the delivery process.
The tactical literacy drive being rolled-out by the Ministry will also include the establishment of learning communities through training of schools where necessary, and the facilitation of remediation through specialist teachers at foundational classes.
Of great importance to the intensified literacy drive will be the development or implementation of support materials to improve literacy throughout the education sector, Manickchand added.

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