….as SUBEB trains teachers on reading and comprehension skills

The Executive Chairman of Ekiti State Universal Basic Education Board, Prof Femi Akinwumi has charged teachers in public primary schools in the State to work assiduously towards ensuring that pupils cultivate the proper reading culture and comprehension skills.

Prof. Akinwumi gave the charge in Ado-Ekiti during the opening ceremony of a 5-day masters training workshop for Basic Education Teachers in the state.

The Chairman, who was represented by the SUBEB Director of Teachers Training, Mrs Temitope Shola-Shittu said, “the programme is to train the teachers on how to encourage their pupils to be more interested in reading and comprehension of whatever they have studied”.

Prof. Akinwumi while advocating for proper reading culture said there is an urgent need for Stakeholders to deliberate on the ways forward and come up with new strategies to scale up reading and comprehension skills for both learners and teachers of basic education in Ekiti State.

The SUBEB Boss stated that the importance of the training cannot be overemphasized especially at a time like this when reading habit is diminishing among learners of the various categories of educational institutions.

“Many of us have substituted the time for reading text books for surfing the internet, phone browsing, playing games on the computer,etc. All these are gradually eroding the knowledge to gain by reading books and the effect is everywhere around the present generations of youths, many of whom are becoming either educational illiterates or semi – lliterates”.

Prof. Akinwumi however emphasized that the goal of reading is comprehension, that is, “extracting meaning from what we read”, stating that reading and comprehension go together. He noted that if a person has not been able to extract meaning from whatever material has been read, reading has not taken place at all.

The Chairman affirmed that the training is meant to deal with how to return all of stakeholders in the basic education sector to the era of reading as an industry for both the learners and their teachers.

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Highlighting one of the simple ways of achieving the desired result, he said that teachers can still revert to the habit of reading a particular text to their pupils and ask them to chorus after him/her and then asking the pupils to read the same text one after the other following the same process, believing this will make reading more interactive and interesting within and outside the classrooms.

The SUBEB Boss while appreciating Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) for their continued support also explained that the State Government organized the training program in conjunction with a non-governmental organization, Reading Awareness Society for Development in Africa (RASDA) to aid the development of the basic education sector in recognition of the need to partner the private sector towards achieving rapid and sustainable development, adding that the Board would continue to partner interested competent organizations and donor agencies to achieve the desired goals.

Reiterating the commitment of the Oyebanji led adminiatration to improving the basic education sector and making it compete favorably across the globe, Akinwumi advised teachers in the State to take advantage of the opportunity presented to them by the state government to improve themselves and in turn impact knowledge gained to their pupils.

Earlier in her remarks, the program coordinator and President of Reading Awareness Society for Development in Africa (RASDA), Mrs Bukola Ladoja said that the objective of the organization is to promote reading culture in Africa.

Mrs Ladoja while mentioning that, the organization has rigorously launched campaigns against neglect of books especially by children and youths in Nigeria stated that their activities are centered on ensuring that everyone sees the importance of cultivating the culture of proper reading and comprehension.

She said the idea of the training is to educate and equip the teachers with skills needed in the classroom to get the pupils interested in reading which would also aid their comprehension.

Mrs Ladoja advised the participants that they must be ready to learn, unlearn and relearn to progress.

“If Teachers are not learning and relearning, education and reeducating, you cannot educate the pupils”
“One of the aims is to ensure that the pupils in our public primary schools can favorably compete with their peers around the globe”. We are trying to aid government in their pursuit of a better basic education sector by organizing such training programs across the country”.

She disclosed that the training is meant to be“cascade training” where the participants at the training program are expected to return to their local governments and teach the others what they have learned.

Each of the participants is also expected to deliver a story book to show that they have understood all that have been taught at the program.

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