Thursday, March 31, 2011

80 Percent of Nigerian students cannot read

About eighty percent of Nigerian students cannot read properly, says Mrs Winihim Jemide, Executive Director, On boarding Impact Consultancy via the outcome of a recent research conducted round the country.

Addressing the teachers at the four-day training workshop on quick reading skills in Port Harcourt, she said the whole idea of the workshop was to  re-invent the reading culture among pupils and youths in the country.

She said the Quick Reading training session for the teachers would equip them with the needed tools to fast track reading ability among their students. She added that teachers would in turn go to their various local government and communities to teach other teachers on the Quick reading approach to enhance reading culture.

“Research shows that 80 percent of Nigerian students are not reading properly. The quick reading programme is to provide teachers with tools to teach reading.

“We are on the back of Mr President on this. The foundation was born as a result of the poor performance in the last NECO exam. The President sees the state education has brought him and he wants others to get there too. “

In their separate comments, programme Manager, Bring Back the Book Foundation, Mr Weyinmi Jemide,  expressed the hope that this new initiative of President Goodluck Jonathan would stimulate a healthy revival in reading.

Also speaking, Rivers State Commissioner for Education , Dame Alice Lawrence Nemi, hailed the project saying she was not surprised that the state was chosen for its pilot scheme because of steps so far taken by the Rivers state governor to shore up quality of education all over the state.

It would be recalled that President Jonathan recently launched the bring back the book project after it was discovered that  the reading culture had dropped among youths in the country.

How true is this research? 


Stauber - "This type of research lacks any statistical relevance. It is ridiculous how numbers get churned out, easily, from some unsubstantiated research.

The 80% of Nigerian students means nothing if the researcher does not tell us whether the students under study were from nursery, primary, secondary schools or tertiary institutions and how the students under study were tested. If you tell me that among a random sample of 1000 Primary Five pupils selected for the research, 80% could not read one page of a single-spaced memo in 2 minutes, this makes more sense in terms of understanding the research. I suspect those behind this type of research are planning to hoodwink the government into wasting funds on such nonsensical study or program"

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