Special Reading Initiatives
Over the years, a number of initiatives have been undertaken to increase literacy attainment in Malta. The National Policy for the Attainment of Core Competencies in Primary Education focused on the identification of learners struggling with basic literacy, and the National Literacy Strategy for All in Malta and Gozo focuses on promoting and enhancing “lifelong and life-wide literacy practices.”15,16
Several programs are being promoted to ensure increased standards of literacy development. For example, Read with Me seeks to motivate learners ages 0 to 3 together with their parents to develop an interest in books and enjoy reading. Because it is important for children to have a variety of books at their disposal, the national Enriching Classroom Libraries program has provided the class library of each state school with more than 100 appealing and attractive books in Maltese and English. Another program, Reading Ambassadors, invites well known local personalities to visit schools, read stories aloud, and act as role models to promote enthusiasm for reading. A national contest was launched in 2014 to encourage children and teenagers to promote interest in reading among their peers by acting as reading role models.17
Other reading initiatives include The Magic of Stories and Reading Stars. The Magic of Stories, a family literacy program for children ages 4 to 6 and their parents, involves weekly sessions during which stories are read in an engaging manner. Reading Stars seeks to highlight and model to others the reading habits of fluent readers of all ages. People who are observed to be reading and caught on camera are rewarded by the National Literacy Agency. The agency also organizes an intensive summer reading campaign to promote reading for fun in the summer months when children are out of school. It is presumed that through the agency’s initiatives the “number of individuals who are socially excluded because of a lack of or a low level of literacy skills” will be reduced.18