The joy of reading

At the secondary school in Ranamure, Sri Lanka’s Central Province, a new trend in book reading has emerged. Book cupboards, strategically placed in classrooms, have transformed the school into a reading hub. Introduced under a UNICEF-supported programme aimed at promoting non-violent disciplining techniques in Sri Lanka, this innovative approach has taken reading to a whole new level; with competitions and games, reading has been made a fun activity, inspiring all students to participate actively, and significantly improving student behaviour and reducing classroom disruptions.

Nestled at the foot of the mighty Knuckles Mountain Range of Sri Lanka, Ranamure is an isolated farming village with no telecommunication facilities or a proper access road. The school is nearly 100 years old and caters to 168 girls and boys living in and around the little village. The school provides education from grades 6 to 11, with most classes housed in a stone hall built in 1933.

Ms Samanthi Wijeratne (29) teaches physical education at the Ranamure School and takes leadership in inculcating discipline and encouraging good behaviour among students through sports and physical activities. She explains the situation the school faced in terms of discipline before the in-class libraries were introduced. “The biggest problem we face in the Ranamure school is the layout of the main classrooms; the larger part of the school is housed in the old hall, which is divided into classrooms.” The plywood separators used to divide the classrooms have seen better days.  They now serve merely to demarcate the classrooms but provide no privacy. “Due to this setup, noise passes through, distracting the students. Especially if a teacher is not available or late, students start shouting, and the other classes get disturbed.”

“At Ranamure, we don’t have an adequate number of teachers. This is mainly because of the rural setting of the school. Most teachers don’t stay here for long. For this reason, there is always an unsupervised class that starts becoming boisterous. This often results in some sort of punishment for the children; we have had to make them stand out of the classroom, shout at them, and at times, even cane them.”

However, in December 2023, the situation changed when Samanthi participated in a UNICEF training where she learned new non-violent techniques for encouraging better behaviour among students. Samanthi received this training under UNICEF’s programme on ‘Ensuring all children have equal access to quality schools.’ The programme focuses on building the capacity of teachers and school administrators to adopt learning and teaching approaches that are safe and nurturing and prioritise the needs and interests of children.

“The positive discipline training provided by UNICEF taught me the importance of keeping students engaged in their studies and extracurricular activities and how to deliver a more holistic education for the children. The training also taught me to explore ways to discipline children without resorting to any form of punishment,” explains Samanthi.

“After I received the training, I wanted to introduce a way to keep children engaged when they had free time. Most of the time, the problem arises because we don’t have enough teachers. So, it had to be an activity children could do alone,” explains Samanthi, who was determined to try new ways of implementing orderliness in the classrooms.

“That’s how the concept of giving children more opportunities to read on their own came about. The school has a small library, but it's mostly unused because there isn’t a teacher to manage it. So, I planned a small project to introduce small book cupboards to each classroom; I imparted my newly gathered knowledge to two other teachers who were going to be part of the project. With the support of the school principal, we started collecting storybooks and other interesting books from the library and from our own houses, and we also got resources together to build the cupboards.”

Soon we had a small book cupboard for each class. “Now, when a teacher is late or absent, students take books and read.”

The school's new approach to bringing orderliness in class is a welcome change the children appreciate. For 16-year-old Ms. Tharushika, the school environment is suddenly very positive. “We used to get punished all the time. The boys and girls in our class are extremely naughty, and we shout and play games in the class when there is no teacher. After the book cupboards were introduced, we reluctantly started reading. In the beginning, some of the kids were still making noises and were not interested in reading. Now I see all the children love reading. Even those boys who would make fun of us have taken reading seriously.”

“We have competitions and games based on the reading., including  asking questions from books at assembly which is great because kids are eager to read all the available books.”

“Because the school has only a limited number of books, we rotate the books in the book cupboards so that all the kids get an opportunity to read all the books,” Adds Samanthi.

“The training taught me the importance of exploring other means of discipline, and I can see how well it has worked here. Instilling an interest in reading in them is a big achievement not just for these children but for the whole community in Ranamure. Reading is not only about learning new stories; it teaches children about the world beyond this rural village. They develop curiosity, interests, and ambitions.”

“Additionally, to ensure the children are given all the opportunities of a classroom and schooling environment, we managed to repair the old plywood partitioning to some extent to give classrooms better privacy. For this, we got financial support from UNICEF and the parents. The parents also got actively involved in the repairs and, in some instances, provided support to buy the raw material. Through this initiative, we have managed to introduce a safe environment and also nurture their growth. Children are engaged in schooling and have started paying more attention to school activities,” affirms Samanthi.

The Ranamura School is among many schools in the province that have successfully adopted positive disciplining approaches. This is a drastic shift from the teacher-led classroom setting that’s common in Sri Lanka; rules and regulations define the country’s public schooling system, where students are often punished as a means of disciplining them. 

To ensure all children have access to quality education and a safe and conducive learning environment, with funding from Primark through UNICEF Ireland, UNICEF Sri Lanka initiated the ‘Ensuring all children have equal access to quality schools’ programme in 2022 in 50 schools in the Uva and Central provinces. A key component of the programme focuses on building the capacity of teachers and school administrators to introduce multi-level teaching and positive disciplining techniques to these schools as an alternative to corporal punishment.