Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The USAID has completed the distribution of 120,520 teaching and reading resources in 1,460 schools in seven districts of Sindh including Sukkur, Larkana, Dadu, Qambar Shahdadkot, Jacobabad, Khairpur, Kashmore and five towns of Karachi under $165 million government-to-government initiative.

The project is being implemented under Sindh Basic Education Programme (SBEP), which is the US government’s direct support to Sindh Education Sector Plan 2014-18. As an integral component of the SBEP, Sindh Reading Programme is in line with Sindh’s educational priorities to advance primary education and contribute to USAID’s global education target of 100 million children with improved rudimentary learning and literacy skills.

These reading and teaching collaterals, consisting of lesson plans, have been distributed under the USAID-funded Sindh Reading Programme (SRP), which is working in collaboration with provincial government to reinforce foundational reading skills of children in Grade – I and Grade – II. The format of teachers’ lesson plans is activity based and implementation-friendly. It inspires greater level of interaction between teachers and students, thus having a positive impact on student-teacher relationship.

The material development is based on an absorbing consultative and review process led by the Material Review Committee appointed by the Sindh government and comprising language and curriculum experts from public and private institutions.

“USAID is striving for quality assurance of teaching and learning practices in schools by creating avenues that empower teachers in the classroom and also holds them accountable. We want to ensure that every child in our target district is able to realise his/her potential through cutting-edge reading and learning resources,” said USAID Programme Manager for Sindh Basic Education Dr Randy Hatfield.

Keeping in view the continuum of special education needs vis-à-vis classroom materials, SRP’s teaching and reading resources are a set of highly specialised aids, which are introducing first time in public school in Sindh. A key feature of these initiatives is that they are methodically aligned with scripted lesson plans, providing students and teachers with an integrated and coherent learning experience.

The teaching and reading materials developed and distributed by the USAID Sindh Reading Programme is a major intervention that ensures the creation of low-cost education tools to improve reading scores of early grade students. “We welcome and appreciate these strategic interventions by US Government, which are facilitating fulfillment of Article 25-A of the Constitution of Pakistan, which stresses upon free and compulsory education for children between the ages of 5-16 in Pakistan,” he added.