More than 100 full-time teachers specialising in literacy have been deployed to state primary schools in Malta and Gozo through the government’s national literacy strategy.
The strategy, rolled out in 2008, aims to ensure all children complete primary schooling with at least a basic level of English, Maltese, mathematics and e-learning.
The reforms being undertaken at the early childhood and primary education levels will serve to combat illiteracy by tackling the issue at its roots.
“We need to cater for the individual needs of every boy and girl,” Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said during a visit to the Mtarfa primary school yesterday.
Dr Gonzi said that while the national reforms gave a structure and direction to teachers, it also gave a degree of liberty to the newly founded college structures to develop their own best practices in the field.
The objective of the system is to spur innovative ideas and encourage college principals and school heads to tailor their programme to the specific needs of the children and community they service.
The strategy’s rollout included the setting up of a new tier of peripatetic teachers aimed at training teachers in literacy at college level and an increase in complementary teachers specialising in basic skills and literacy.
The Specific Learning Difficulties Unit has also been beefed up to address the individual needs of children with specific learning difficulties.
Dr Gonzi pointed to the new benchmark tests as an important tool in mapping the progress being made in the field of literacy.
These tests, which will formally replace the Junior Lyceum exams for the first time this year, are part of the reform in the transition from primary to secondary education.
Teachers and parents were the movers and shakers in combating illiteracy, Dr Gonzi said. In the past 10 years, over 2,000 teachers had been trained in the development of writing skills through the Malta Writing Programme run by the Education Ministry.
Visiting a paired reading class in which parents and children read portions of text together to improve confidence, Dr Gonzi said by being involved in the education process, parents felt more attuned to the progress and needs of their children and participated in this development.
Since the reform in the transition from primary to secondary education, teachers had also been given additional training to cater for the new format of mixed-ability classrooms.