English oracy pilot programme deemed a success, to be extended

The English proficiency of children at St Margaret College’s Kindergarten 2 in Żabbar improved as a result of the English Speaking Union Malta’s oracy pilot programme held during the 2009-10 academic year.

Moreover, most of the children said they had enjoyed the programme, which made them realise the language was important for them.

These were some of the main conclusions of an evaluation report drawn up on the programme by Charles Mifsud and Rosalind Vella, two academics from the University’s Centre for Literacy.

While agreeing that the programme was beneficial to the children and should be continued, Prof. Mifsud and Ms Vella made various important recommendations.

These included the sugges­tions that, if possible, the programme should be extended to the early primary years; that training should be provided to the volunteer oracy tutors (OTs) before the programme starts; that collaboration between the OTs and the school’s early childhood educators (ECEs) should be increased; and that the number of oracy programme sessions be increased to two or three a week per class.

Bernie Mizzi and Richard Whale, who jointly head the local ESU’s Arm of Support programme and were responsible for the project, welcomed the encouraging research findings and confirmed that the pilot programme would be extended to Year 1 classes in Żabbar and that a new pilot scheme will start at Years 3 and 6 at St Monica School in Gżira.

The programme was launched last October and was conducted throughout the academic year in all nine of the kindergarten’s classes.

The school has just under 150 children, aged four to five, in the nine classes, with the number of pupils in each class varying from 12 to 17. The Żabbar primary was identified by the Directorate of Education.

Four volunteer OTs were recruited after a call for applications and an interview. Each tutor worked in the same two or three classes throughout the year, conducting 20-minute sessions, which were sometimes extended to an hour, once or twice a week.

Tutors worked closely with the school’s ECEs and conducted sessions related to topics being covered at the time in the respective class.

To evaluate the pilot programme, the Centre for Literacy used questionnaires to collect data from the pupils, the school’s nine ECEs, the four OTs and the children’s parents.