EFFORTS TO ENCOURAGE CHILDREN TO READ (PAGE 67, MAY 31, 2010)

THE Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, on Saturday launched newly developed supplementary readers aimed at encouraging active reading in children.
Known as the Reading Goals Series, the new readers employ popular themes such as soccer and the history of the soccer World Cup to capture the reading and learning interests of children.
They have the Ghanaian international football hero, Michael Essien, as the role model around which the series is developed and they also capture the history of Essien from childhood to his current activities at Chelsea FC.
They are targeted at pupils in Primary Four, Five and Six.
The project is an international collaboration among Pearson and Sedco-Longman, both world acclaimed publishers, Chelsea FC, UK, The Michael Essien Foundation and the United Nation’s One Goal Project.
The first set of 90,000 copies, produced at the cost of GH¢1 million, is to be distributed to schools in the Central Region. Other parts of the country will be supplied in the course of the year.
Mr Tettey-Enyo said the new supplementary readers tied in with the Ministry of Education’s determination to ensure that the targets spelt out under the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for education were attained.
He said there were many children of school age who were currently out of school, a situation which posed a major challenge to the government, civil society and other stakeholders.
He said to ensure that education was functional and effective, there was the need for a collaborative effort to step up the current levels of literacy to an acceptable rate.
Mr Tettey-Enyo urged the various district directors of education to ensure that the books were made available to the children in their districts before the World Cup, adding, “The children need to read and enjoy the books while the competition is on.”
In a recorded message from his base in England, Essien said education was very important for kids in Ghana and expressed the hope that children would strive to achieve high levels of literacy through reading.
The Sales Director of Pearson in charge of Africa and The Caribbean, Mr Michael McGarvey, said the company chose football because it had immense power to enthuse and engage.
“The aim of Reading Goals is to inspire children to read. It is to use football to tell a story and, more important, build the language skills of children,” he added.
He said Book One had 75 words per page; Book Two 100 words per page and Book Three 150 words per page.
Mr McGarvey expressed gratitude to Chelsea FC for the help offered.