Over four million books in English and local languages have been donated to kindergarten and primary schools in 216 districts of the country.

The donation was made by the USAID Partnership for Education- Learning.

The books were selected in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, the National Council on Curriculum and Assessments, and language and literacy experts from Ghana’s universities and colleges of education.

Speaking at a reading festival for the schools in the Greater Accra Region on Tuesday, Mr Andrew Karas, Director of Mission, USAID Ghana, said the initiative was to enable pupils from kindergarten to primary three read in both their local as well as the English languages.

“These books will be distributed to more than 13,000 kindergartens and more than 13,000 primary schools with the hope that children learn to read first in their mother tongue, then in English,” he said.

Mr Karas commended Government for its efforts under its Strategic Education Plan (2010-2020) to ensure that every child develops its potential in reading.

He said over the past 20 years, our socio- economic development had been stalled due to low level of literacy among primary pupils.

“In 2013, the Ghana Early Grade Reading Assessment had sobering results which showed that less than 2 percent of primary pupils could read with fluency and comprehension”, Mr Karas said.

He said the USAID Partnership for Education– Learning is investing $17 million within five years to ensure that every Ghanaian child could read.

Mr Karas said USAID Partnership for Education had many components and the main aim is to help children in the country to read.

“Our Learning component has the auspicious goal of training 51,000 teachers on reading education and turning 2.8 million primary pupils into readers”, he said.

Mr Karas cited the development of sound policies and curricula, well trained teachers, well equipped education managers, effective monitoring and evaluation systems, and vigorous testing and assessment programs as some of factors which could contribute to a literate society.

He said together with the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service, USAID’s Partnership for Education programme would address all those challenges.

Mrs Felicia Boakye-Yiadom, Grearter Accra Regional Director of Education, lauded the USAID Ghana for the initiative as it would help boost the reading habits of children in primary one to primary three.

She urged teachers in the country to commit themselves to the ideas o the programme to make it successful.

She urged the pupils to endeavour to read a lot as reading had become the basis for one’s ability to understand any written instruction.

Dr Guitele Nicoleau, Chief of Party, USAID Partnership for Education- Learning, said apart from English, the donated books have been written in languages such Twi, Ewe, Ga among others.

She said the apart from the Greater Accra Region, the Reading Festival was also going on in all the other nine regions.

She urged teachers and parents to ensure that children inculcate in them the reading habit.

Some of the participating schools were Dansoman, One to Six Basic Schools, AME Ebenezer Basic School, Akwebu Basic School, Star of the Sea Catholic School among others.