Weak literary skills : Cause of poor performance in exams
The Greater Accra Regional Director of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Mrs Felicia Boakye Yiadom, has identified weak literary skills as one of the key factors affecting the performance of pupils in national examinations.
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“These low outcomes of students have been undermining the quality of our entire education system limiting the socio-economic development prospects of the country,” she stated.
She was speaking at the “Burt Award for African Literature Speaking Event” in Accra.
The programme, organised by the Ghana Book Trust, brought together two previous winners of the award to speak to pupils of some of the selected schools about their experiences as writers.
GES’s intervention
To solve the problem, Mrs Yiadom said the GES introduced the language policy to ignite the passion of reading in children.
Per the policy, the medium of instruction in kindergarten and lower primary should be Ghanaian languages and English where necessary, she explained, and said that was very important because children learnt to read better in their local language.
She further explained that the policy was, therefore, to help pupils become functionally literate in both their local language and in English by primary three.
Unfortunately, she said, some schools were not following the dictates of the policy.
Essence of event
Speaking on the importance of the event, the Executive Director of the Ghana Book Trust, Ms Genevieve Eba-Polley, said the programme was meant to help children cultivate the desire and appetite for reading and writing.
“When we support children to improve their literary skills, it improves their performance in other subjects such as mathematics and science,” she said.
One of the writers, David Kwakye, advised the pupils not to see writing as an activity meant for some special breed of people.
According to him, it takes constant practice for one to master the art of writing.
