Reading rates show major improvement

| 09/09/2014

(CNS): The education minister has said that government schools are improving reading rates with an increase in student performance of some 44% at year six.  Over the last three years teachers, students, and parents “rose to the challenge,” Tara Rivers stated Monday, in her international literacy day message, when she said 76% of students are now leaving primary school reading on grade level. While in secondary school in 2011, 59% of year 11 students received a Level 2 pass in CXC English in 2014 it was 70%. Improving literacy standards continues to be a high priority for the minister who pointed to a number of out of school as well as in school programmes. 

“We are committed to providing support for our most at-risk students through interventions like Levelled Literacy Intervention,” she said. “These programs are a continuation of the joint efforts of Literacy Is For Everyone Ltd. (LIFE) and the Department of Education Services’ Literacy Team. We are also supporting our teachers through theimprovement of school libraries and teacher resources rooms.”

See Rivers full statement below

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  1. Anonymous says:

    Being able to read is a good thing but not without comprehension.  Spelling and writing correctly such as " i knowed the schools wasn't teaching kids right " instead of "I know the schools aren't teaching children properly."   The main problem with our schools is moving children up to a higher grade regardless of whether or not they passed final exams of the previous year. 

  2. Anonymous says:

    Since there are no unskilled factory jobs here, and that most people aspire to work in an office, although it is encouraging to know that reading levels have increased, learning to speak would give the average graduate a distinct competitive advantage in the marketplace. 

  3. Anonymous says:

    Meanwhile in other news, writing standards of bloggers on CNS remain mostly poor.

    When ever was 76% leaving primary school a good statistic?It means nearly a quarter cannot read properly. It should be 99.9% (and the 0.1% is for those with learning difficulties). And 70% getting the secondary qualification?..ok any improvement is good, but these stats alone explain a lot of the unemployement issue- we for example cannot put people with poor written English into the front line of our office-we will lose our clients, and if we do that, we all lose our salaries. So anyone out there who does not think this is important, think again, and hard.

  4. Anonymous says:

    So, almost 1 in every 4 children still cannot read to grade level when leaving primary school?

  5. Anonymous says:

    Tara,

    Quite a few of your MLA colleagues could do with Levelled Literacy Intervention.

  6. The Caymanian says:

    Taking everything in the recent past into consideration,  why would they still belive that we the people would belive any figures they come up with?   Comeing up with numbers that work is not the same as haveing numbers that work.  Show us that to get back the trust that you have already lost.

    • Anonymous says:

      It looks like you could benefit from the literacy programme: "belive" vs. "believe"; "comeing" vs. "coming"; "and haveing" vs. "having".