By
Kodjo Adams, GNA
Accra, Oct. 19, GNA
– The World Bank, as part of its commitment to helping countries respond to
learning crisis among children, has supported Ghana through the literacy policy
package aimed at promoting reading proficiency in primary schools.
The World Bank had
also supported the country to strengthen her entire education systems, so that
literacy improvements can be sustained and scaled up to achieve other education
outcomes.
Dr Beatrix
Allah-Mensah, the Acting Country Manager, Workd Bank, said this in Accra to
mark the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
It was on the theme:
“Ending Learning Poverty; What Will it Take”.
She said eradicating
poverty in all dimensions, as embodied in Goal One of the 2030 Sustainable
Development, remained a global challenge, which needed collective attention.
Dr Allah-Mensah said
many children were experiencing “learning Poverty,” a percentage of
children who could not read and understand a simple story and were failing to
acquire foundational skills such as basic literacy by age 10.
She said quality of
education was still a challenge in most countries with significant discrepancies
in learning outcomes between low-income and high-income countries, and regions
within countries.
In low and
middle-income countries, 53 per cent of children in late primary could not read
and understand a simple story, she said.
Dr Allah-Mensah said
the World Bank, in 2018, created the Human Capital Index to build political
commitment for accelerating investment in people, especially in health and
education.
She urged
governments to be part of policy discussions, directions and interventions that
would contribute to ensuring achievement in eradicating learning poverty for
sustained growth.
She encouraged
teachers to respect and accommodate the different learning needs of students
and meet with parents to inform them about the progress of their children.
Dr Allah-Mensah
advised children to take their studies seriously and make time to read a story
book every month and join reading clubs to improve their learning skills.
Mr Eric Appiah,
President of the Ghana National Association of Private Schools, sharing his
views on ways to end learning poverty, called on the authorities to create a
reading period in the curriculum to instill reading habits among the children.
He called for
collaboration with agencies and stakeholders in the educational sector to
improve on children’s reading and public communication.
Mr Asare Adjei, a
member of the Ghana Publishers Association, said people must be encourage to
write, which was critical in accelerating the philosophy of reading.
Some of the
participants called for holistic efforts to identify the problems and proffer
solutions to end learning poverty.
Others urged parents
to play a supervisory role by encouraging their children to read at home with a
well-established library.
GNA
