Anambra Sets Up Community Reading Hubs For Literacy Enhancement Of Children 

Raymond Ozoji, Awka

Anambra state commissioner for Basic Education Prof. Kate Azuka Omenugha has said that the state government is currently setting up Community Reading Hubs across the 21 local government areas of the state to improve literacy level of school children.

The commissioner stated that the initiative of reading and literacy culture began from the inception of the present administration in the state. According to her, the governor has vowed to ensure that Anambra is among the three top states in the country with the lowest illiteracy level.

Omenugha who disclosed the innovation to journalists during the distribution of over one million books and 21 laptop computers to schools at the weekend in Awka, said that they had literacy festival where teachers were taught literacy skills, analytical thinking as well as taught students how they could enjoy the classroom.

She said the state government conducted a research and found out that the riverine areas were seriously disadvantaged educationally and otherwise which she said prompted government to deploy more teachers to the area together with incentives to encourage them. She  added that the state government was also making frantic efforts to strengthen its Education Management Information System and data collection.

Although she expressed worry that the idea of leaving a child on his or her own to learn how to read and write was an aberration in Igbo culture and tradition, she emphasised that it was of paramount importance for parents, teachers, community members, President-Generals and traditional rulers to begin to take interest in the learning process of the child.

Omenugha maintained that the Anambra State Government had begun to get communities involved in the training and literacy enhancement of the child even though she observed that parents most times take their children to school and abandon them there without recourse to whether the child assimilated what was taught in school or not.

According to her, the state ministry of basic education was doing its utmost in calling on parents to take adequate interest in the cognitive development of their children as the present administration in Anambra state was currently paying priority attention to the education sector.