Literacy toolkit benefits 4,000 ethnic minority children

The ELM toolkit t is a useful toolkit to support teachers in their execution of the early childhood education programme (Photo: VGP)

In addition, the capacity of 2,200 teachers and caregivers has been enhanced to support children in developing early foundational skills to better equip them to enter the first grade.

These are some of the achievements of the ELM toolkit as announced at a conference in Hanoi on June 14.

Hoang Duc Minh, Director of the Agency of Teacher and Education Administrators, said the ELM toolkit has proven to be effective throughout its three-year pilot programme. It is a useful toolkit to support teachers in their execution of the early childhood education programme, he added.

An assessment of the toolkit’s three-year pilot using the method of International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) has shown a considerable improvement in the IDELA scores in all domains of the benefitted children. Motion skills increased from 44 to 56%, early literacy skills from 21 to 37%, early math skills from 38 to 50% and socio-emotional development from 27 to 32%.

The ELM toolkit has been one of the key activities of the project, “Emergent literacy and math skills in early childhood development,” in Van Chan district of northern Yen Bai province and Tay Giang district of central Quang Nam province from 2015 to 2018. The project received a grant of US$725,300.

The project’s overall objective is to improve school readiness and inclusive development of targeted ethnic minority children, including H’Mong, Dao, Thai and Co Tu children.

There are three main components of the project: improving the learning environment in pre-schools, improving the learning environment at home and advocating the recognition of the ELM approach by the Ministry of Education and Training./.

NDO