–boost student performance
-by Shamiah Grant
The Ministry of Education is stepping up its literacy efforts to help students build strong vocabulary, comprehension, and critical thinking skills, while also providing greater support for parents at home.
Education Minister Sonia Parag shared the update during a recent interview with NCN, highlighting the ministry’s commitment to making literacy a cornerstone of every child’s education.
Minister Parag says strong reading abilities can have a significant impact on a child’s overall academic performance and future opportunities.
“Which is why I have been very passionate and I have been very deliberate about literacy assessments and numeracy assessments in the primary school level. And that will be at grade two and grade four. And we started the literacy assessment in the 2025-2026 school year. And we are going to start the numeracy assessment this school year, which is 2026-2027.And what we have seen, we did an assessment of the results of those assessments. And I can tell you that I expected worse because I wasn’t too sure where we were at with the literacy,” she said.
The Ministry is also working to empower parents, particularly in vulnerable communities, through the creation of literacy hubs.
“And those literacy hubs are for parents because, and for obvious reasons, parents feel that there’s a stigma attached to the fact that they don’t know to read and so on. So, but we are trying to help them so that they can help for themselves and also that they can help their children,” she added.
The Education Minister is also encouraging students to read beyond their traditional textbooks, emphasising that broader reading can strengthen comprehension, critical thinking and prepare young people for the demands of today’s economy.