Ghana Districts: A repository of all Local Assemblies in Ghana

EDUCATION

About 1500 basic schools in East Akyem benefits from reading festival

About 1,500 basic school pupils in the East Akyem Municipality have benefited from a reading and quiz festival to inculcate in them the habit of reading.

Date Created : 10/27/2011 12:00:00 AM : Story Author : GNA

The pupils were selected from 33 basic schools in the Municipality to undergo series of reading and talent exhibition exercises as part of a programme aimed at improving their confidence in speaking and reading the English language.

Ms Anita Adomako, President of “Yen Anidaso” Club of Readers (YACOR), who organised the festival at Kyebi at the weekend urged parents, teachers and all stakeholders to help inculcate reading habits in pupils across the country.

She said she was touched by the poor performance of schools in the Municipality particularly this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results and decided to help by establishing the club to reach out to the schools.

In her view, reading helped to improve the performance of the pupils because it enhances the child’s knowledge, which enables him to become responsible and problem-solving citizens that Ghana needs to achieve its development goals.

She said, “the pupils, especially those in the rural areas need more intervention to boost their academic performance in reading and communication in order to match their peers in the urban areas and this could be achieved when all of us and corporate organizations give them more books and the encouragement to read”.

Ms Adomako observed that most pupils from the rural areas could not read, speak and write the English language fluently as compared to their peers in the urban areas because they were not encouraged to do so.

She used the occasion to call on all interested organisations to come and support the project through the donation of books to the YACOR to enable it to help the pupils to grow to become what the nation expected them to be.

The Club buys over 100 story books every quarter for the pupils in East Akyem District schools and feeds over 2000 of them during the reading and quiz festival.

Some of the activities embarked upon at the programme were inter school quiz competition, reading exercises and talent exhibition, all in a bid to instill reading habit and to help unearth the talents of the children.

The best three schools received prizes ranging from computers, textbooks, reading materials and certificates for their respective schools.