Parents urged to provide reading books for children

ONE of the most important skills in education is reading and parents should take up the responsibility of providing reading materials such as books, newspaper articles and magazines for their children at home to give them a head start, a senior educationist says.
A pioneer graduate from the University of Goroka, under early childhood education studies, and now a trainer and teacher at Omega Academy School at Lae Magdalene Tiki, called on parents to make it their responsibility to educate their children at home and provide them with school materials.
She said parents overlooked little responsibilities such as buying reading books and other readable materials useful for their kids.
“Children learn a lot about letters, words, pictures and numbers in their classes and it will really help them if such things are provided to them at home to maintain their phase of learning,” Tiki said.
She said parents pay for school fees and assumed that everything was provided in schools, but that was not the case in many schools throughout the country where there was no government sponsor and TFF delays.
“Reading in English is the key to success of subjects such as mathematics, social science, science etc.
“Reading will help students know what is going on with other subjects and it will be easy to comprehend.”
Sintex Academy School principal Moses Joe said ECE was an important part of education for a child.
He said most people were still into the elementary format of education that was why they did not understand ECE’s importance.
Joe told the parents and guardians of the children attending Uni Block Early Childhood Centre graduation last week that ECE became popular in towns and cities because it was a foreign idea that produced best students’ academic performance starting in their early ages.