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.