Monrovia – During one of its “I Can Read” Reading Hour Sessions, British Ambassador to Liberia, Ambassador David Belgrove volunteered several hours to read to young school children, an initiative established by the Kids’ Educational Engagement Project (KEEP).
Ambassador Belgrove noted that “reading, an essential skill, is vital for children’s development; it opens so many doors and opportunities to enrich lives.”
Last week, Liberia awoke to the shocking news of mass failure in the West Africa Examinations Council (WAEC) Exams with results showing that only 38.48% of students who sat the Exams successfully passing.
This result has been labelled as the worst WEAC results in four years.
While many speculated over the numerous factors that contributed to the mass failure including the lack of qualified and trained teachers, and the lack of access to resource study materials amongst others, there is one core area which cannot be overlooked nor overly stressed: many of our students lack basic reading comprehension.
Education experts agree that reading comprehension is the bedrock of learning. Many Liberian students somewhat sail through grade levels without full reading comprehension skills.
Little wonder therefore that Liberian students sadly flunked the WAEC Exams as many do not fully understand the questions being asked either in the reading, literature or English exams.
Most schools do not offer Reading as a stand-alone subject nor actually help students develop good reading skills or habits.
However, one local education charity organization is tackling this program one student, one reading session at a time, and at an early stage.
The Kids’ Educational Engagement Project (KEEP) has been working with a few schools to develop a culture of reading among the children. To encourage this culture, KEEP has been conducting “Reading Hours” where, as one of its strategies, students are read to and the students in turn read passages from the books with questions asked of them to explain what they understood from the passages read.
After reading three books to the children, one of which was the all-time children’s classic “The Three Little Pigs”, Ambassador Belgrove said that it was a pleasure to visit KEEP’s Reading Room, and to share in the delight of the children and teachers.
He expressed the hope that more Liberian children will be encouraged to read as reading forms the bedrock of education.
KEEP has plans to construct and rehabilitate several more reading rooms over the next year with focus on public schools where a lot of these basic facilities are lacking.
KEEP is a local non-profit organization that supports educational activities in Liberia. You can read more about their work on www.keeplib.org or call 0886510731 if you would like to support its programs