The Federal Ministry of Education in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has developed the 'Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) Instruments' as part of efforts to inculcate reading skills and habit among children in the Nigerian education system.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of a three-day adaptation workshop on 'Early Grade Reading Assessment Instruments on Igbo and Yoruba Languages' in Abuja, the Director of Policy, Planning, Management and Research Department in the Federal Ministry of Education, Bridget U. Okpa said that EGRA is an oral student assessment designed to measure the most basic foundation skills for literacy acquisition in the early grades.
According to her, the EGRA which has been implemented in more than thirty countries and more than sixty languages gears towards recognising letters of the alphabet, reading simple words, understanding sentences and paragraphs as well as listening with comprehension. She added that the instrument has been administered twice in Hausa Language in 2011 and 2013 in Bauchi and Sokoto States by the Northern Education Initiative in collaboration with USAID.
Bridget Okpa also noted that reading has become so dynamic and scientific that some research findings have indicated that learning in the mother tongue in the early years enhances learning achievement. Adding, the Nigerian National Policy on Education (NPE) provided for children to be taught in their mother tongue or the language of their immediate community in the first years of the primary school system.
She expressed regret that the provision in the NPE has not been taken very seriously in the country and therefore not fully implemented. "The Global Language Register (GLR) 2007 Report indicated that less than a third of the world's languages are dying, many of which are Nigerian languages. Participants should come up with ways to encourage the systematic acquisition and development of local languages in both formal and informal education," he said.
In her goodwill message, the Education Team Leader of USAID, Jill Jupiter-Jones remarked that reading is very crucial in the 21st century. She further explained that what USAID is doing through the Early Grade Reading Assessment is to make reading relevant and interesting to school children and hopes to extend the project to four other states in the northern part of the country.
According to her, the key objectives of the workshop include - to select appropriate sub-tasks for the EGRA instruments; design teacher, head teacher and parent questionnaires; design classroom observation checklists, interview protocols and adapt the EGRA instruments to Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and English languages.
Jill Jupiter noted that the outcome of the workshop which is to end on Wednesday November 6, 2013 is expected to form part of the framework for the Monitoring of Learning Achievement (MLA) for the Education Ministry.