Call for literacy co-ordinator in schools

INTENSIVE teacher training and a dedicated literacy co-ordinator for each school are vital to raising reading standards, claims the principal of a Dublin school where pupils have made huge improvements.

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.