Ten schools in Samoa, six in Upolu and four in Savaii are involved in a pilot project, which is designed to help improve literacy skills in the country.

Literacy has been one of the concerns that has been raised by the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture. Even an English proficiency test that National University of Samoa (N.U.S.) Foundation program students sat for in 2022 came back with a 60 per cent failure rate. 

But there is a concerted effort to address the anomaly with the resumption of the Synthetics Systematic Phonics (S.S.P.) programme has resumed this year in Samoa focusing on students in their early years of formal education. Phonics is a method of teaching reading skills by correlating the sound with a symbol of an alphabet of a particular language.

Tuiloma Inipene Simanu, the Assistant Chief Executive Officer (Curriculum Design and Materials Division) at the M.E.S.C. highlighted that the phonics strategy and skills have been forgotten over the years.

“The teachers have forgotten that there is value of using phonics to teach reading. Reviving phonics is also reviving the skills that teachers have lost or have forgotten to use,” she said.

“So, through this programme teachers now have the skills and strategy, and they can use  them to help students improve their reading. The programme also provides teachers with teaching resources and assessments to help them evaluate what students have learnt.”

During the training held in early March this year, teachers from the 10 pilot schools identified the gaps in their teaching activities related to literacy and phonics strategies, which they will try to address by implementing the S.S.P. programme in their classrooms.

Itagia Vaifou, a Year 4 teacher at Lalomalava Primary School, explained that one of the challenges she faced in teaching reading skills to students was how to pronounce each letter and word of the Samoan language.

“One thing I have learnt in the phonics workshop is how to pronounce letters and how phonics at the lower primary school level should be taught. The phonics programme reminds us how to pronounce each letter sound correctly,” she said.

Mere Vadei, Team Leader of the EQAP Curriculum and Assessment team, explained that EQAP is happy to support this intervention programme in collaboration with M.E.S.C. as a means of improving reading and comprehension skills of children in Samoa.

“Being able to read with comprehension is a basic life skill that determines success in later learning and later life. It should really be a right for every child, so supporting this intervention programme with Samoa MESC is a key activity for EQAP,” she said.

The information that will be gathered from the assessment that will be carried out in the coming months will be used by teachers to plan the next steps for individual student’s learning and to track students’ reading development.

This information will also be available to MESC for policy decision-making purposes and in particular, the identification of schools or teachers that require further support.

The programme was designed through a collaboration between the Pacific Community’s (SPC) Educational Quality and Assessment Programme (EQAP), Samoa’s Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture (MESC) and literacy experts from the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), Educators International (EI) and experts from the region.

As part of the programme, the IT team in EQAP has developed a web-based Samoa Phonics application to support teachers and MESC officers to access relevant information as well as upload assessment information.

Customised reports for individual students, classes and schools will be made available through the application and can be accessed by those who are provided with role-based access. It is envisaged that the availability of information from this application will enhance the programme further through evidence-based decision-making.