History

When our chairwoman Marian Dekkers taught for the first time in India at a primary school in 2011 for the ‘Planet Hope’ foundation, she was struck by the poor technical reading skills of the children. Children of 7 and 8 years, in Grade 2 and 3 were given an individual reading and could hardly read a word yet.

After conversations with teachers, who were often not, or not sufficiently trained, it turned out that they found it very difficult to convey this and they indicated that they needed guidance in this.

Due to the lack of didactic knowledge and teaching materials among the local teachers, the ABC was memorized the whole day. As a teacher Marian was asthonished, because this was a total wrong way of teaching children how to read. The headmaster told her, many children left the school halfway, because they could not understand the lessons anymore. Children became drop-outs….

Because many children do not come to the basic good reading, they can not comprehend the texts. This is very frustrating for many children and many children drop out halfway through primary school, because they can no longer follow the course material, while they do have the abilities.

Other children in higher groups were very motivated to learn and then started learning the texts by heart, without understanding what they were reading. Also, the level at which English was spoken was very low in all groups.

Marian found this shocking to see, especially since it later turned out that the same problem was at other schools in India. She has returned to India several times and has coached these teachers.

At the request of local teachers in India, she then wrote two methods, which gave the teachers a guide and taught the children to read, with increasing difficulty in English.

In 2018 and 2019, she gave two trainings to 40 primary school teachers in Bangalore, India. Teachers were very enthusiastic, which inspired her to set up this foundation, so that more children and teachers, anywhere in the world, can benefit from these methods.

The foundation ‘The Key of Education’ was founded in 2021.