The Deputy Minister of Education Begoña Pedrosa, together with the principals of six schools in Bizkaia and representatives of Berritzegun, presented the Basque Reading Strategy on February 14 in Bilbao. The main task of the Reading Strategy is to organize and articulate the treatment of reading in a school in order to prepare competent and good readers. Although the strategy has been strengthened, the line of work is not new; In 2018, the Department of Education of the Basque Government made a set of support and protection resources available to the educational community of the Basque Country. With the aim of improving students' reading and encouraging reading, each school designed its own Reading Plan based on its own reality, which needed to be adapted from time to time. It is in this adaptation phase that the presented renewed strategy is located.

Now, through new and specific projects, the updated strategy comes to strengthen reading. Self-governance has weight for each school to analyze and adjust the goals related to reading and to make subsequent evaluations and decisions to intervene. Not only that, families are also very important; The strategy mentions the cooperation between families and teachers, the direct influence of families on the motivation to read and the relationship between student parents' associations or nearby resources, such as libraries.

"Language without readers will not develop; and therefore it will be exhausted" These words of Miren Billelabeitia, 2023 Essay Euskadi Literary Award, writer and teacher take as a starting point the new text of the Reading Strategy. Based on this idea, Deputy Minister Pedrosa explained that reading is fundamental in the development of language and education, "students must be able to understand and interpret texts in a variety of ways. Students must have the ability to receive information, reflect and transmit messages". This strategy puts the student at the center of the action, he will be the protagonist, as the goal is to achieve autonomy in his tasks.

Aligned with the Education Law

In Basic Education, solid foundations for lifelong education are established, such as learning to read, reading is essential in the learning process, it provides access to information and knowledge in the areas of the curriculum, stimulates critical thinking and improves cognitive ability. It helps develop essential skills for success in any walk of life. It also helps develop language and communication; as it allows you to expand your vocabulary and improve your grammar and spelling. Being so basic, the Reading Strategy has been reformed in accordance with Law 17/2023 of the Education of the Basque Autonomous Community. "Helping to learn to read is one of the greatest gifts that can be given to a student," acknowledged the Deputy Minister of Education.
As part of the School's Education Project, the School's Reading strategy should be one of the key focuses. The school needs a well-defined program that will address the treatment of reading from all curriculum areas, ensure students basic reading training, and lay the foundation for future development as proficient readers.

Enjoyment, communication, learning

The school's reading strategy must achieve the following goals:
a) Promoting the development of reading skills.
b) Stimulate, increase and strengthen students' interest in reading as an element of personal enjoyment.
c) Providing and reinforcing strategies from all areas of the curriculum so that students develop reading communication skills and prepare themselves as subjects who are able to adapt successfully in and out of school.
d) Students learn strategies and techniques for reading, interpreting, and distinguishing important information in a variety of different types of texts.
e) Turning school libraries into real resource centers, in different media, for learning and enjoying reading.
f) Obtaining the involvement of the entire educational community for the sake of the habit and hobby of reading.

To achieve all these, the Reading Strategy is a stable and open document. The treatment of reading has become a school project, always within the Language Project, in line with the school's Education Project, properly coordinated and structured, which the entire cloister knows and complies with.

A tool for early detection of difficulties

The procedure for early detection, identification and intervention of specific learning difficulties is one of the new tools included in this strategy. It consists in the early detection of learning difficulties, it allows to know the existing difficulties, to deal with them and to prevent problems. In this way, to be able to guarantee the academic and personal development of the students.

Early detection of specific learning disorders, such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and others, is essential to intervene and improve academic performance. If learning difficulties are detected early, it is possible to give students the necessary support as quickly as possible to reach their full academic and personal potential.

In order to validate this detection procedure, they have carried out a pilot project with 30 schools (in the 2022-2023 academic year they piloted the one corresponding to the 1st VET level and in the 2023-24 academic year they are piloting the one corresponding to the 2nd VET level).

Measurable reading

Since the 2021-2022 school year, the Department of Education has launched a pilot project: a total of 152 schools have gone through the process. To evaluate the reading performance of 2nd grade students in a simple and practical way. The Institution for the Evaluation and Research of the Teaching System (Instituto Vasco de Evaluación e Investigación Educativa) has designed this tool, in collaboration with the Main Innovation Center. From the 2023-2024 school year. From the next school year, there will be special interventions as a result of the evaluation and they will be open to all schools.

It is an individual test that teachers can give to boys and girls, which is done in two parts. In the first part, the student reads aloud a given text and the teacher measures the intonation, speed and reading ability. Then the student has to answer a series of questions mainly to assess understanding. The application combines the results of the two tests and shows in a graph the level of development of each skill, of the student, of the whole class and of the level. Thus, when the school has this information, it will analyze the data, draw the relevant conclusions and take the necessary measures.