Gareth Davis, Gleaner Writer

Port Antonio, Portland:

Educator and principal of Shebian Preparatory School in Portland, Dr. Aileen Willams-Allison, strongly believes that every normal child should be reading at the end of the basic school age.

So firm is her belief that she has created Friendly Phonics, a conceptual baseline data-reading programme aimed at producing a fully reading child by age five.

The Friendly Phonics programme is designed to ensure that every basic and infant school child can read before leaving the early childhood institution.

Her reading programme, used in schools throughout Portland and Montego Bay, has been very successfully.

"To read, a child needs to know the sounds ascribed to each (letter) symbol, not the name of the symbol (letter)," she said. "No child should be passed from grade to grade unable to read, unless that child is so mentally challenged that reading is an impossibility," she said.

Dr Williams-Allison, who studied the country's educational system for several decades, hopes that her programme will be used in many more schools across the island.