The Seychelles Reading Journey: 2 years later |09 April 2022
The Ministry of Education and a Renaissance learning team from the United Kingdom held a webinar on Thursday to discuss ‘The Seychelles Reading Journey: 2 years later’.
Present for the webinar, which took place at the Ministry of Education, Mont Fleuri, were the director general of Allied Education Services, Cyril Pillay; representatives from the Renaissance learning team and teachers and pupils.
The webinar detailed the two-year reading journey of the children in primary schools in Seychelles since the inception of the programme.
Mr Pillay said the online reading programme from Renaissance is an important undertaking which is contributing to the improvement of reading in the schools in Seychelles.
He emphasised that information technology (IT) is distinctly featured in the ministry’s new strategic direction.
Mr Pillay said that this is one of the focus areas which supports the integration of ICT in teaching, learning and policy development.
The Renaissance reading programme contributes to the strategic objectives relating to the focus area and continues to complement the curriculum, Mr Pillay stated.
Karen Randolfe from the Renaissance learning projects team stated that there has been exciting initiatives taken and great progress has been made.
In 2020 over 5000 hours of reading were recorded, 30 short training videos were shared and viewed over 4000 times and 3,509 star assessments were administered.
In 2021 the accelerated reader was piloted with nine schools and a total of 1564 quizzes taken. Pupils passed 80.6% of quizzes on average and the accelerated reader will be launched in all schools in May 2022.
Pupils also read a total of 3,746 hours outside school time in 2020 and 5,970 hours outside school hours in 2021.
In the last two years 150,000 books were read in 1.04 million minutes.
Pupils, parents and teachers also presented their views regarding the learning programme on the webinar with most parents highlighting that the pupils’ vocabularies have extended and a strong relationship have been built between the parents and the readers.
The pupils got to choose from a variety of interests and their hours were recorded.
Most schools however experienced some challenges when it came to internet connectivity and accessing the Renaissance learning products but that did not deter the pupils from reading.
Chris Job from the Renaissance team presented the online competition results in which Glacis, Au Cap and La Retraite primary recorded 100% participation. The top three schools with the highest percent of books completed were Glacis, Au Cap and Baie Ste Anne primary. The Accelerated Reader Award went to Anse Etoile with pupils from P4 and second was Glacis primary with pupils from P5. The Ministry Award went to Glacis primary for the year 2021.
The accompanying photos show some highlights of the webinar.
Marla Simeon
Photos by Louis Toussaint
