The Zamfara State Universal Basic Education Board (ZSUBEB), says it has trained 1,974 teachers on jolly Phonics to scale up pupils’ literacy learning capacity.

Alhaji Garba Abdullahi, Director Primary Education of the Board, made the disclosure at the inauguration of the training exercise on Monday in Gusau.

Jolly Phonics is a leading English literacy method that teaches children how to read and write using phonics.

Abdullahi said the training was an annual exercise organised by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) in collaboration with the ZSUBEB.

He said the exercise was designed to expose teachers on new methods of reading and writing, to enable them to impart relevant knowledge and letracy skills on pupils.

According to him, Zamfara State has been active in the programme since 2011, with the aim of scaling up the state literacy level.

He said that recent data of the National Bureau for Statistics (NBS) showed that: “the illiteracy level of the state has drastically reduced to nine as against 21 per cent.”

Also speaking, the Manager of the Training Programme, Malam Abbas Tsafe, said that Jolly Phonics was an easy avenue for coaching pupils to learn how to read and write effectively.

Tsafe, who is also the Technical Education specialist in the state, said the programme would be extended across the 14 Local Government Areas of the state.

He said that the councils had been divided into four zones to facilitate effective implementation of the programme.

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The manager, therefore, urged parents to send their wards to school, to mobilise participants in the programme to achieve academic excellence.