By Gabriel Katuho
A RECENT World Bank report shows that 72% of children aged 10-years-old in PNG are not able to read and understand an age-appropriate text.
This was revealed by Joy Ker Wong, a senior education specialist from the World Bank during a presentation on the education sector budget analysis at the first education and training sectorial committee in Port Moresby this week.
She said these children were at the high risk of dropping out of the school or not being able to continue into secondary education.
During the discussion, several stakeholders raised concerns about the dying reading culture, compared to how it used to be in the past.
Professor Kenneth Sumbuk, while chairing the meeting, urged parents to make reading a habit so that their children would follow.
He said children learn through observation from their parents and so parents should be considerate in how they acted as it had an impact on their children.
Dr Wargirai, a political science lecturer, while acknowledging Wong’s presentation, said even the reading culture in the tertiary institutions had diminished.
He said students do not read a lot of books and that resulted in lack of cohesiveness and quality in academic writings.
PNG according to statistics from the World Bank is the most illiterate nation with in the Pacific.
