The first Literacy and Robotics Programme of the Ministry of Education was launched at Den Amstel Primary School, Region Three yesterday through the National Literacy Department and the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD.
Den Amstel Primary School is the first school in the country to benefit from this programme and Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, said that she has been working with parents and teachers of the school. A Ministry of Edu-cation press release yesterday stated that that one of the issues was that children attending the school were not reading and performing acceptably according to their grade level. The release stated that a decision was taken to send a team to assess the children of the school and it revealed that 70% of the learners were not reading on par with their grade level. Manickchand told teachers that the school will not be the same anymore for the 45 out of 67 learners who have trouble reading. These pupils will be locked into a strict six-week literacy programme and exposed to robotics at intervals.
