Children reading ability declines - report

The 2012 report of the World Vision Ghana (WVG) shows a percentage decline of children who can read at the age of 11, in the organisation's project areas.

The report said performance monitoring and evaluation conducted across programme areas on boys and girls achieving English literacy standards after grade six reduced from 62.19 per cent in 2011, to 59.42 per cent in 2012.

The WVG report, which was made available to the Ghana News Agency on Monday, noted that the result from the programme areas is substantially high as compared to the national average of 35.3 per cent.

It said generally, most of the school communities in the programme areas continue to experience peculiar challenges such as inadequate reading materials, poor reading habits of children and the lack of well-equipped libraries.

Others include teachers refusal to accept posting to the hinterlands and the presence of a high number of untrained teachers.

“The Kassena East Area Development Programme (ADP) assessment indicate that children in schools located in areas where there is electricity, read better than those in the hinterlands since they have access to electricity to do further studying in their homes in the evenings,” the report stated.

WVG has 34 ADPs across the 10 regions.