Pilot project to get schoolchildren reading more

For a decade and more UDS has been busy providing books and other reading materials for schools in Kamuli town and district, both with its library and with book boxes provided to schools in rural areas. As we have reported in previous blogs, we’ve had great success with a number of students who have made good use of books to which they otherwise would not have had access.

But we know that there is still a lot of work to be done to improve literacy rates in rural Uganda.  Back in 2009 we carried out a survey during National Book Week. We monitored practical reading sessions at schools and pinpointed an underlying resistance to reading culture among many schoolchildren, with low value being attached to written information and a huge lack of resources.  This is a serious problem, as if schoolchildren to not develop reading skills at an early age they find it very hard to catch up later in their eduction.

UDS therefore in July of last year embarked on a 12-month pilot project to help encouraging children to rea  in the early primary years.

We initially identified two schools – a rural, state school and an urban private one, to see how effective we could be.  We chose Kyeya Primary, a state school with some 800 pupils, located 17 km outside Kamuli town. The school has 12 teachers. In town, we picked Bezallel Primary, a private* school with just over 400 pupils and 21 teachers.(*fees at this type of school are very modest).

Four teachers were chosen from each school, and we provided them with training in various teaching methods to improve reading as well as book management.. We also stressed the value of teaching handwriting, as that in turn contributes to the improvement of reading skills.

Together with the schools and academic publishers,  a list of books, mostly stories with pictures such as Jonah and the Whale, Cinderella and Beasty and the Beast, plus some reading instruction books. These books were acquired for the programme – 262 of them.

The reading programme proper  got underway in March of this year, once the new books had arrived. UDS is supporting  extracurricular reading and debating clubs in addition to regular classes which have now been added to the timetables at both schools.  Our aim is to give a real boost to literacy in Kamuli schools and help future generations with their studies. 

    

Students and teaches value our book boxes

We thought we'd like to share with you some first-hand testimonials from students and teachers in Kamuli to demonstrate the value of our book boxes.
 
Shamim Abdul is a student at Kamuli College School. She’s pictured here at the UDS book box with the school librarian, looking up words in a dictionary.
Shamim says the book box is a crucial resource for the school. She always turns to these books as, she says, the books supplied by her school don’t give her the information she needs.

Her teachers told us that Shamim has a curiosity and thirst for knowledge that goes beyond the school curriculum. She doesn’t want to learn just enough to pass her school exams, which is what she gets from the school’s own books. Shamin herself told us that the UDS books are an avenue to a much broader education.

The librarian, Esther Nambi, is also delighted at the book box service. She says some of the private schools have no text books at all, so UDS is filling a need. She urges UDS to continue offering the service - not only for the benefit of the schools, but also for the students since they are the “pillars of our country” as she puts it.

Alira Martha is 17 years old, now in her fourth year at Bugabula Secondary School. On her own admission, she wasted the first two years, missing classes, playing truant, and spending her days hanging round the town. But her poor results in exams at the end of year two turned out to be a wake-up call.

Her teachers suggested she began carrying out her own research, so Martha turned to the UDS book box in her school. She says from that time on she began to do better. “My performance kept on improving that I managed to pass with a second grade in s.4 (fourth year) first term and (got) a first grade in mocks”, she told us. Martha is expecting to get a first grade in her final exams.

Now Martha encourages her fellow students to always aim higher, since education is the key to success. She’s now also asking her teachers to put in more effort so that students perform better, and advising school administrators to construct a library for the school to enable students concentrate with their studies. She thanked UDS for providing the books that enabled her to turn her education around. She hopes UDS will continue to provide even more books – especially books on science.

Want to contribute and find out more ? Watch the video below.