To enhance reading skills among the students of Government schools, the State education department entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Room to Read India Trust on Monday.
The additional project Director, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Mukul Kumar Sati said that the aim of the programme is to improve the language skills-listening, speaking, reading and writing-in addition to the utilisation of school libraries and implementation of projects related to girl child education in the State.
He informed the project is designed to make independent readers out of the students by inculcating reading skills and habits into them. He added that an environment conducive for reading would be developed in the schools under the programme.
Under the project all 505 Government primary schools of Champawat district would be covered. Sati said that Champawat would be the first district in the state where all the schools would be covered under the project with Room to Read.
This organisation has been active in Uttarakhand for some time now and has so far helped in setting up libraries in 835 schools in Bageshwar, Nainital, Tehri, Haridwar, Uttarkashi and Dehradun districts. It has undertaken language teaching programme for class I and II students of 233 schools of these districts in the year 2015-16.
The trust is undertaking nodal library project in 140 schools in Narsan, laksar and Bahadarabad blocks of Haridwar district and Chamba and Narendranagar blocks of Tehri district. Extension of literacy programmes in 100 schools each in Dehradun and Udham Singh Nagar districts of State were held last year.
It is worth mentioning here that a third party analysis of the project in 58 Government primary schools of Haridwar district in the year 2013-14 had provided a very good feedback on reading skills of the students.
The MoU was vetted by APD Sati on the behalf of SSA and Country Director Saurabh Banerjee from Room to Read organisation. The expert SSA, A Syana, B P Maindoli, state coordinator Arun Singh Bisht, State coordinator Room To Read, Pradeep Kumar and senior programme officer, Pushplata Rawat were present on the occasion.