Mr Paul Antwi Oppong, the District Education Director, speaking at the launch of the programme dubbed “Reading Explosion”, an initiative solely funded by the Directorate, said the focus was to sustain the interest of children in reading, which would in turn improve their academic performances.

It would cover pupils in Primary three to the final year of the Junior High Schools (JHS), including; the private basic schools in the District.

Mr Oppong said the innovation was a sequel to augment a five-year reading project implemented by the USAID and another partner, for pupils in KG2 to Primary 2 in all public schools in the District, which ends this year.

He said the success of USAID reading project, which registered tremendous impacts on the target school children, informed the decision for its extension by the Directorate. ‘We found great success in the reading skills and learning abilities of the pupils at the KG2 to Primary 2 level, as a result of the USAID learning programme, which would be ending this year in the District.

We therefore found it necessary to extend and expand the impact to all the pupils at the basic school level to help facilitate and enhance reading and learning in schools’’, he noted.

Rolling out the programme activities, Mr Oppong said the target pupils would attend early morning reading classes, two reading periods on the school’s daily time table, extra classes on Saturday and Sundays, and vacation classes, among others.

He mentioned areas of concentration for the programme in empowering the reading skills and abilities of the children as poetry, songs, rhymes, stories, news casting and others.

Already, two primary school teachers and one JHS teacher from each school in the District, have through a trainer of trainer’s workshop, received training on the fundamentals of coaching the pupils to read within the shortest possible time.

He mentioned concentration for the programme in improving the reading skills and abilities of the children as poetry, songs, rhymes, stories, news casting among others.

Reverend Father Afrifa Yamoah, the Catholic Parish of Kumawu and the Local Manager of the Roman Catholic Schools in the District commended the GES Directorate for the initiative and called on parents to support the teachers in ensuring the success and sustainability of the initiative.

He also called on stakeholders to support the Directorate with the necessary resources in order to smoothly run the programme in the district. 

The District ranked 43rd in Basic School Certificate Examination (BECE) nationwide league with 64.74 per cent in 2016, it grabbed the 18^th position with 75 per cent in 2017 and came 7^th with 91.08 per cent in 2018.

It has 41 public primary schools, 38 public JHS and 27 private basic schools within five educational circuits - Kumawu, Bodomase, Besoro, Dadease and Banko and the target is to attain 100 per cent in the BECE performance this year.