Reatile brightens up Zenzeleni’s children
ALEXANDRA – Reatile brings light to Zenzeleni learners.
The future of Zenzeleni Primary School learners was made better and brighter through a recent donation of spectacles to the visually impaired.
Their good Samaritan was Reatile company’s Vision For Change programme, established to change the lives of young South African children. The company said in a statement, “Seventy-two of 1 010 children from Grade 0 to 7 were issued with prescription spectacles on 2 August after a four-day screening and testing exercise by optometrists found that they were visually impaired.”
The exercise deemed enormous, “[It] made a significant impact to the school and difference in the lives of the children who can now fully benefit from their educational opportunities and function more effectively and, the teachers can now teach without constraints,” read the statement.
The programme was conceptualised with the Department of Basic Education which identified vision as a major educational challenge among children in public schools. “Good visual perception is necessary for their effective learning, school achievement and sporting ability. “Studies indicate that 80 per cent of what a child learns is through visual pathways without which there is poor cognitive development.”
Also, a national assessment of literacy levels is said to have found that only 45 per cent of Grade 3 and 35 per cent of Grade 6 learners can’t read and write at levels expected of their age. “Improving their sight will, therefore, decrease the drop-out rate before they finish Grade 12 and overcome an unemployment crisis in future.”
The initiative will be sustained through annual screening of newly enrolled children and biennial assessment of the prescribed spectacles.
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