KUWAIT, Nov 4 (KUNA) -- Chairman of the Kuwait Dyslexia Association (KDA) Mohammed Al-Qatami said on Saturday learning disorders suffered by some students in public schools is related to late discovery of dyslexia cases as a result of inappropriate teaching methods.
Al-Qatami, in a statement to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), said dyslexia means reading and writing disorders, weakness in vocabulary, difficulty to focus and learn information in a consecutive manner such as the days of the week, the months of the year and the alphabet.
Al-Qatami noted that the Dyslexia Higher Educational Committee has been formed in cooperation with the Ministry of Education to supervise all dyslexia related activities and support mainstream government schools.
The committee currently has seven members and is chaired by Abdulaziz Al-Jarallah, the Secretary General of the Kuwait National Committee for Education, Science and Culture and Al-Qatami as Secretary.
The members are experts and counselors from the Ministry of Education, and international experts.
The committee aims at dealing with issues of help and support for dyslexics, raising awareness, developing tools for screening and assessment, developing a multi-sensory teaching system in Arabic as well as lectures, training, workshops and conferences.
It was established after a two-year comprehensive survey on school students in all the governorates of Kuwait that revealed Kuwait is suffering from a high percentage of Dyslexic students which reached 50,000 cases, Al-Qatami added.
He said after the Ministry of Education took a look at the increasing rates of dyslexic students. It agreed to provide KDA with two dyslexia friendly schools namely Arwa Bin Al-Hareth and Abdulmohsen Al-Bahat for the elementary level to present the experiment of the British Ministry of Education in this field.
He said the British experiment proved its success in treating learning disorders and does not require major financing or the need to change the curriculum because it is based on training the specialist in Kuwaiti schools and the treatment provided for dyslexic students.
Students with dyslexia that are spotted in an early stage have more than an 80 percent chance of recovering, he added,
He said the bodies that contributed to KDA's activities are the patient's fund, the ministries of Education and Higher Education and Awqaf and Islamic Affairs, the UN Development Program, UNESCO, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Kuwait University.
Al-Qatami urged parents, students and those concerned with dyslexia to attend a monthly seminar scheduled next Tuesday at KDA on the latest developments and achievements of KDA.
By Hamed Al-Amiri
