Schools under the Universal Basic Education in Benue State have benefitted free learning materials worth N105.3 million from a United Kingdom publisher known as Universal Learning Solution (ULS).
The learning items according to the publisher is to help fight against illiteracy in the state in collaboration with the Benue State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) after training at least 1000 teachers in the Jolly Phonics programme across the three senatorial district of the state.
Chief Executive Officer of ULS, Gary Foxcroft, who spoke through his Training Manager, Nicholas Ochojila, expressed delight that the organisation is expanding Its work in Benue state and thanked the state government for providing an enabling environment for the project.
"We believe that in a short time from now the pupils in Government schools will be reading fluently," he said.
Ochojila posited that jolly phonics is the world’s leading synthetic phonics programme which teaches the 42 sounds in fast and fun way and is widely used in schools in the United Kingdom amongst other countries.
He explained that synthetic phonics is a method that has been proven to enable children who learn English as a second language to read and write effectively in English.
"Free materials from the UK publisher, Jolly Learning worth NGN 105,326,000 have been donated to teachers, students and classrooms across Benue State by Universal Learning Solutions (ULS), which manages the projects across Nigeria. ULS is a not-for -profit NGO whose vision is of a world where all children can read and write with confidence and enjoy their right to learn, thus helping release a child’s infinite potential," Ochojila added.
He further stated that the ULS jolly phonics project has donated 2,393,583 pupil books and 59,937 teacher books, trained over 34,000 teachers, head teachers and government officials and potentially reached over 2,378,000 pupils all over Nigeria, stressing that with the new plan of training of 1000 teachers in most states, the numbers of beneficiaries are set to explode.
Meanwhile, the Benue SUBEB Chairman, Dr. Philip Tachin and the Head of Training, Emmanuel Shima, have been integral in ensuring that the jolly phonics project works well in the state.
Tachin who was accompanied on a visit to the makurdi training venue addressed the teachers, along with the Head Academic of the ULS jolly phonics Benue team, Prof. Chinwe Muoduogu.
