On International Literacy Day on Monday, yet another literacy action plan was rolled out. This one was the “National Revised” model, and since it has been seen as necessary to introduce it, one must presume that its predecessors did not produce the desired results. It was Minister of Education Priya Manickchand herself who did the honours, telling her audience that a literacy test had been conducted from Grades One to Six, and a 32% grade level literacy rate had been found. This did not mean, she hastened to add, that the other children could not read, and that 68% of the primary school population was illiterate; it was simply that only around a third of them had attained the reading standard for their grade, “which was way too low for us.”
While this is only an average, it does suggest a possible general answer to a question that the ministry has so far been reluctant to supply, namely, that the pass rate at the National Grade Six Assessment this year was low. This impression is reinforced by the fact that one of the goals of the revised plan is to achieve a 60% pass rate at this assessment, from which one can deduce that this year’s rate was lower than this, although how much lower is open to conjecture. The main objective of the programme, however, is to have every child a reader by Grade Four, which in the heady days of old, would hardly have been regarded as particularly ambitious.
The most frustrating thing about the Ministry of Education is that, with some exceptions, eliciting meaningful statistics is an almost impossible task. In the case of literacy, we now know that 68% of schoolchildren read below grade level, but how many of them exactly reach Grade Six and still cannot read at all? The ministry must know this if it tested the children, but it isn’t saying. If it is seriously interested in involving other sectors of the society in the literacy drive, then it must be candid and divulge all the figures which it currently regards as a state secret. The first step in any battle is to have a realistic assessment of a situation.
And while the officials are at it, could they please give the public some account of what the proportion of functionally illiterate pupils is in the secondary system – whether primary tops, community high schools or secondary schools. Furthermore, what has been the success rate (or otherwise) of the previous literacy drives and its various components – or has the last one, at least, been a total failure, which is why the decision has been taken to introduce something entirely new again, rather than build on what is already in place – assuming it is still in place?
On a related issue, particularly where the secondary levels of schooling are concerned, what about the automatic promotion policy, which was supposed to be buttressed by remediation within the schools so the affected children could make the grade? After the current Minister came into office she was persuaded by the teachers in particular, to reverse that policy, but it has now been reinstituted again. So why was this done? Was it because so many children were failing that making them repeat a year was causing a huge organizational headache for head teachers? Would the officials please tell people what the figures for repeats were at the time the policy reverted to what it had been under Minister Baksh, and to what extent these involved reading difficulties.
The current Minister made reference to remediation to be conducted by specialist teachers, but only at the foundational level. Does the ministry have any plans for remediation further up the system, or are older children not to benefit from such efforts? Earlier remediation programmes were supposed to be implemented at the secondary level as well, although there is considerable doubt that they ever worked.
Minister Manickchand rightly noted the importance of parental support and encouragement, and probably recognizes the difficulty some parents will have with reading themselves. The problem, one suspects, may go back in certain cases as far as two generations of parents, who if not actually functionally illiterate, have very low-level reading skills. While the Minister concentrated on the primary school in this latest exercise, it is still important to know what the levels of literacy are for all age groups in the country. To the best of anyone’s knowledge the Ministry of Education has never undertaken a literacy survey to uncover the extent of the problem and the context in which their latest measures have to function. In other words, not only does the public not know what the literacy statistics are for this country, but the ministry does not know either, and does not seem to want to know.
There have been in the past serious efforts to promote adult literacy in collaboration with a variety of groups, but nothing has been heard of that for a long time, and neither was anyone outside the groups concerned too clear about its long-term impact. It is, of course, difficult for adults to learn to read unless they are very highly motivated, which poor mothers and fathers for the most part will have neither the stamina nor the energy to be. At the very least, however, there needs to be some kind of outreach programme to persuade them of the importance of their children learning to read (in the squatting areas, many of them do not even go to school).
Reaching these parents, and single mothers in particular, cannot be left to the teachers, given the staffing constraints in the schools. Yet there is no substitute for face-to-face contact with parents, which would be a challenge in the case of squatting areas, like the one far at the back of Mocha, or in the urbanised centres where so many single mothers are engaged in security work and are out for long hours. Yet it is the children who come from these circumstances who are most in need of support.
This is not to forget the hinterland, where small children sometimes travel long distances to school and which has its own particular challenges.
The dearth of information on previous programmes and literacy levels apart, most of the ‘strategic outcomes’ as they were called, which were outlined by the ministry had merit of one kind or another. For example, there was reference to the establishment of reading clubs and libraries in every school, and one hopes that where the latter are concerned the authorities are taking into consideration the need for security for books, and the structures and people necessary to run a library.
Reading tents/centres around the country were another initiative mentioned, an idea which could be expanded in various ways to attract younger children who have no supervision after school because their mothers/parents are at work.
Minister Manickchand believes that literacy is everyone’s business; she is right, it is. However, she must be prepared to allow her officers to supply the full data on literacy which they have available, so the public has a true picture of the problem, and those who might be prepared to contribute could be in a position to make genuine suggestions and have a meaningful input.