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Teachers, assistants and parents at the training workshop at Athlone North Primary School in Kewtown, with Jeff Paulse at the back.
ATHLONE
Literacy gets a boost AVRIL FILLIES AVRIL.FILLIES@MEDIA24.COM
P
arents, teachers and assistants completed a five-day training workshop at Athlone North Primary School on Thursday 12 March to improve reading and writing skills at schools. The literacy improvement programme was launched at Athlone North in 2014 when the first 30 tutors were trained. “Our literacy training is held in an attempt to address the huge literacy challenge
our country is facing. Learners simply cannot read with comprehension. In 2017, the PIRLS (Progress in International Literacy Study) report revealed that – besides placing last globally – 80% of Grade 4 South African learners could not read English at an appropriate level,” says Jeff Paulse, a former principal and founder of Literacy and Reading Skills Solutions. Paulse, who attended Athlone North Primary, was the principal at the school before retiring in the 90s. At the workshops, participants learn how to successfully teach children to read. “Reading is the fundamental skill any
child requires before being able to learn. We assist and enable struggling learners to master this skill. We have no entry qualifications for participants besides having to be literate themselves. We teach and train anybody,” Paulse says. He believes the poor performance of most schools can be attributed to the serious literacy challenges they face. “To improve the poor reading performance by all learners in our country, the government and education department should partner with civil society organisations to actively drive a dedicated literacy campaign through massive funding for proper train-
ing in teaching literacy skills. At the moment, it’s all talk but no action,” he says. The workshops include a guide on how to implement a one-hour daily reading intervention and is hosted across the province. “Twenty new tutors will graduate this year and thus far we have trained 1 332 reading tutors all over the Western Cape. We go anywhere where we are called to do literacy training. Over the past six years, we have positively impacted the lives of many struggling readers and have created opportunities for our trained reading tutors,” he says. VContact Jeff Paulse on 082 216 2460 or paulsejeff@gmail.com.