Malda holds reading festival for primary students to make up for loss in studies during Covid

Malda: To make up for the overall backlog in studies incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, Malda district is organising a ‘Pathan Utsav Mela 2023’ (reading festival) in the primary schools of the district. The festival also aims to improve the quality of education. The initiative has been taken up by the Samagra Shiksha Mission (SSM) and will continue in various primary schools till September end.

As part of the initiative, the walls of schools have been painted with various educational texts on vowels, consonants, tables, english alphabets, introduction to mathematics and with messages relating to environment conservation.

Many children admitted to school during the pandemic did not get the opportunity to study for two years. Even though the schools re-opened after two years, the children were promoted to the class III and IV but a backlog remained.

To make up for this deficiency, several programmes have been initiated from August 15 to provide lessons to the students. This programme has been taken up mainly for the students of class III and IV

Every teacher has done a baseline survey of the students in an attempt to find out the stage of deficiency. For the next one month, separate time will be fixed for students for the special classes. Emphasis is being laid on reading Bengali and English language by the students.

A child should utter 52 words in a minute but due to the closure of schools, that ability of the children has decreased significantly. In this reading festival, the aim is to make children read with correct pronunciation through fun games.

Besides this, the children will also be engaged in learning different crafts and handicraft items.

Bharat Ghosh, Inspector of Schools, Malda Circle, said: “The work of building teaching-learning aids has started with the reading fair to make reading more enjoyable for the students. In this programme, writing will be done on various walls inside and outside the classrooms throughout the year. This will reduce the loss of reading.”

Basanti Barman, chairperson of Malda district Primary School Council (DPSC), said: “To overcome the problems that have arisen due to the closure of schools for a long period during the pandemic, a month-long reading fair and programme has been taken up by the SSM. Most of the school teachers in the district have participated in this programme. I hope, in the coming days, various schools of Malda district will ensure that the children enjoy going to school.”