MANDEVILLE, Manchester — A first-timer to the Manchester Parish Library’s annual Boys’ Reading Day competition, Nain Primary and Junior High has emerged as this year’s winner.

Dietrich Christie, teacher at the St Elizabeth-based institution who accompanied the team, said the victory came as a surprise. Having only recently learnt of the event the focus was for the exposure of the students and not necessarily on winning, he said.

He believes success will serve as motivation for those who participated and other students at the school to further excel in literacy.

Christie told Observer Central that Nain Primary and Junior High is currently just above the average in the mastery of the Grade Four Literacy Test, but the school’s leadership is insistent on seeing improvements.

The Reading Day activity, which is done in collaboration with the Ministry of Education Region 5, reportedly started in 2008 out of a need to assist boys in developing a positive attitude to reading and improve their performance in the Grade Four Literacy Test.

“Research has shown that boys do need to be encouraged…,” regional literacy coordinator at the Ministry of Education, Colette Morris, told the audience at the Cecil Charlton Hall in Mandeville.

“It is said that boys get 70 per cent of the Ds and Fs in schools. It is said that two-thirds of learning disabilities are identified among boys. Ninety per cent of discipline referrals are boys, eighty per cent of high school drop outs are boys (and) only 35 per cent of college students are boys. Boys, I am encouraging you to start to change all of that now,” she said.

Morris said that at the national level last year 86.4 per cent of girls mastered the Grade Four Literacy Test and 68.6 per cent of boys. As such, she said, more effort is needed to assist the boys in thriving.

However, she told the young contestants that they should not be deterred by the statistics because “it can be done”.

Manchester North West Member of Parliament Mikael Phillips urged them to work together in achieving the common goal of improving their literacy skills.

He said that in order for them to do well in other subjects, such as mathematics and science, reading is paramount.

Phillips encouraged the boys to start a reading club with their classmates, and made a commitment to give each contestant from the winning school a book to start their reading club.

Porus Primary, Broadleaf Primary, Huntley Primary, Nazareth Primary, Bull Savannah Primary, and 2014 winner Richmond Primary were the other participants in the Boys’ Reading Day competition this year.

The boys were judged on their performances in poetry dramatisations under the theme “Power up on Reading”.

For the Boys’ Reading Day, the students also had the satisfaction of hearing a story being read to them. Senior Library Aide Shawn Simpson stirred their senses with Little Lion Goes to School by local author Kellie Magnus.