USAID organizes reading festivals for pupils

USAID Ghana Partnership for Education (Learning) with the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service, as part of its literacy programme, would organise reading festivals for pupils in the 10 regions of the country. These reading festivals support the goal of increasing access to and use of materials in public schools so that 2.8 million children in Ghana could improve their reading skills in Ghanaian languages and English.

A statement issued to the Ghana News Agency, on Monday, said USAID Ghana Partnership for Education (Learning) had procured more than 4.23 million books on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service for the festivals.

After the festivals, they would be distributed to 13,823 Kindergartens and 14,405 Primary Schools in all the 216 districts in Ghana. The statement said the USAID Ghana Partnership for Education had a lot of programmes with the Learning Activity being just one aspect of it.

These festivals support the goal of increasing access to and use of supplementary reading materials in public schools so that 2.8 million children in Ghana could improve their reading skills in Ghanaian languages and English, it said.

The festival began on 17th November 2015 in the Ashanti, Eastern and Volta Regions and would be followed by the Greater Accra, Central and Western Regions on 24th November 2015 with the Brong Ahafo, Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions taking their slots on 2nd December 2015.

The statement said the reading materials consisted of 41 titles in Ghanaian languages and 23 titles in English. According to the statement, reading activities such as spelling bees would be held for KG1 to Primary Three schoolchildren, and demonstrations of innovative uses of reading material would be held for the teachers.

The USAID Partnership for Education (Learning) is a five-year partnership with the GES, MOE, implemented by FHI360 and a consortium of local organisations and seeks to improve, expand, and sustain reading performance for primary school learners nationwide, with a special focus on children in Kindergarten One through Grade 3 (KG1-P3).