With schools now look­ing to re­sume in-per­son in­struc­tion, and stu­dents hav­ing been sub­ject to on­line learn­ing for near­ly two years, the AR­ROW Foun­da­tion is of­fer­ing so­lu­tions for stu­dents who are fac­ing learn­ing-re­lat­ed chal­lenges—in­clud­ing strug­gles with lit­er­a­cy.

In an of­fi­cial re­lease, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of the AR­ROW Foun­da­tion, Christo­pher Bon­terre, says the pan­dem­ic con­di­tions have had an im­pact on chil­dren’s lit­er­a­cy and learn­ing skills, hence the need for the re­me­di­al learn­ing AR­ROW is now of­fer­ing.

"A re­cent Unit­ed Na­tions' re­port stat­ed that the learn­ing loss­es for chil­dren as a re­sult of COVID-19 is 'the largest dis­rup­tion to ed­u­ca­tion in his­to­ry',” he not­ed.  “It should come as no sur­prise that the pan­dem­ic’s ef­fects on chil­dren's lit­er­a­cy and learn­ing skills, lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly, have been wide­spread and ad­verse, with re­ports show­ing that the re­stric­tions put in place to con­trol the spread of the virus have led to a re­gres­sion in ba­sic learn­ing skills in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion, con­cen­tra­tion, writ­ing and oral flu­en­cy.”

Bon­terre added: "Fur­ther­more, there is a sense of anx­i­ety that comes with an en­tire gen­er­a­tion falling be­hind in ed­u­ca­tion; dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ing so­cio-eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren. There is an ur­gent need to con­sid­er al­ter­na­tive and en­gag­ing ways of get­ting them back on track and ful­ly im­mersed in learn­ing once again, es­pe­cial­ly with Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tions just around the cor­ner. The AR­ROW Foun­da­tion is strate­gi­cal­ly poised to help stu­dents in this sit­u­a­tion."

Bon­terre ex­plained that the AR­ROW pro­gramme, which utilis­es a brain-based learn­ing ap­proach through the self-voice tech­nique, sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hances the lit­er­a­cy skills in stu­dents of all ages and abil­i­ties at a rapid rate.

De­vel­oped more than 40 years ago in the UK by Dr. Col­in Lane, AR­ROW is an acronym that stands for Au­r­al–Read–Re­spond–Oral–Write.  It fo­cus­es on re­me­di­al work in read­ing, spelling, dic­ta­tion, speech and lis­ten­ing skills, and as­sists stu­dents who ex­pe­ri­ence aca­d­e­m­ic chal­lenges by trans­form­ing their en­tire ap­proach to learn­ing. The com­put­er-based learn­ing ap­plies use of the self-voice—a record­ing of the learn­er’s own voice while read­ing—which forms the ba­sis of the mul­ti-sen­so­ry learn­ing ap­proach.

“Its util­i­sa­tion in schools across the coun­try can prove to be a fun­da­men­tal step in tack­ling this huge prob­lem di­rect­ly,” he said.

These students are thoroughly engaged in learning through the use of the ARROW learning software. (Image courtesy The ARROW Foundation)

A re­port by UK-based OF­ST­ED, car­ried out dur­ing Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber of 2020, stat­ed that the chil­dren hard­est hit by school clo­sures had re­gressed in some ba­sic skills and learn­ing, while old­er chil­dren had lost sta­mi­na in their read­ing and writ­ing. Read­ing was the most sig­nif­i­cant re­gres­sion com­mon­ly point­ed out by pri­ma­ry school lead­ers, as well as writ­ing skills in­clud­ing spelling, gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion and the abil­i­ty to write at length.

“Our bea­con sta­tus pro­grammes en­sure that tar­get­ed schools have the spe­cial­ist brain-based tech­nol­o­gy in­stalled on-site and that the teach­ers and staff re­ceive the req­ui­site skills, train­ing and sup­port to not on­ly raise lit­er­a­cy lev­els, but al­so to deal with is­sues like cri­sis and trau­ma that may ham­per learn­ing,” Bon­terre said, as he ex­plained how AR­ROW could ad­dress this crit­i­cal lit­er­a­cy and learn­ing sit­u­a­tion.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, our aim is to sup­port the ex­ist­ing ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in or­der to re­verse the set­backs caused by COVID-19 and raise lit­er­a­cy lev­els for all stu­dents in need,” he as­sert­ed.

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The lo­cal AR­ROW Foun­da­tion is a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, which has es­tab­lished an en­vi­able record of ac­com­plish­ment over the past 15 years, hav­ing trans­formed the lives of thou­sands of chil­dren in over 200 schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Based on their su­perla­tive re­sults, the Foun­da­tion has been able to ex­pand its reach through sup­port from or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing BP Trinidad and To­ba­go, RBC Roy­al Bank, Methanex Trinidad Lim­it­ed, JB Fer­nan­des Memo­r­i­al Trust, Cit­i­zen’s Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme, An­gos­tu­ra Lim­it­ed and At­lantic.

For more in­for­ma­tion on the AR­ROW Foun­da­tion, vis­it www.ar­rowtt.com or call 624 9063.