Call for literacy co-ordinator in schools
Our Lady Immaculate Junior School in Darndale has seen the numbers at the lowest reading level drop by 75% in two years, and it went from having no pupils with national average scores or better to one-in-five in the same time.
The success was a result of supports under a pilot project from St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra that included fortnightly teacher training from literacy lecturer Dr Eithne Kennedy and funding for hundreds of new books from a number of organisations.
Each of the school’s classes spends 90 minutes every day dedicated to writing their own stories and poems, reading books to match each child’s own ability with a focus on taking real meaning from what they read, and working with words on areas such as phonics and vocabulary development.
“We integrate the literacy programme into the entire curriculum, so a teacher could be doing environmental studies or another subject but they would also be working on developing the children’s reading skills,” said principal of the 240-pupil school with boys and girls from junior infants up to second class.
“The two-year pilot phase involved regular professional development for the teachers and one of our learning support teachers became a full-time literacy co-ordinator. Ideally, every school should have an extra post of literacy co-ordinator and the same type of intensive training so staff know how to do this right,” she said.
There were also significant gains in writing and children in the highly disadvantaged school reached national norms for spelling. The project is being extended to 1,200 pupils in eight other Dublin schools as Write to Read, a collaboration between St Patrick’s College, schools and community groups.
Education Minister Ruairí Quinn, who launched the expanded programme yesterday, wants every primary class teacher dedicating a similar 90-minute block of each school day to improving literacy and numeracy.
His department’s planned national strategy in this area proposes major professional development for teachers to help them improve how they address reading, writing and maths, as well as changes and extensions to initial training for primary and second level teachers.
But the increased investment in ongoing training will have to be funded at the expense of other education spending areas, according to briefing material on the strategy to the minister from his officials.
The department has reduced the number of teachers on leave from schools to provide such in-service training by more than half in the last four years, mostly by merging or reducing a range of school support services.
