Schoolfield Primary and Infant School in St Elizabeth has been making major strides in improving literacy among the students.

The school has received special commendation from Minister of Education Ronald Thwaites, having moved from an average of 31 per cent literacy to 78 per cent between 2013 and 2015.

The teachers at the institutions have been able to transform underachieving students into high achievers and have helped high achievers to maintain good grades.

Principal of the institution, Prim Lewis, said the school's success results from a mix of creativity and hard work.

She told JIS News that, through several initiatives, the children have many incentives to become strong readers.

"We have a competitive reading competition ... . Once per month, we offer incentives for the top readers and we have a weekly top speller programme, which is geared at getting strong candidates for the Spelling Bee programme," Lewis said.

With help from community businesses, the students receive gifts to help them stay motivated.

"We have two business places in Santa Cruz that provide us with tokens for our monthly reading programme and our top-spellers programme. One of them is LT Stationery, and the other one is Andrew's Data Supply," the principal noted.

Another key component of the school's efforts has been strong parental involvement.

"In our kindergarten classes, we give the children books to take home to read with their parents. The parents need to sign off that they are reading with them. The kindergarten children keep that book until they are able to read it," Lewis told JIS News.

With the help of a literacy specialist from the Ministry of Education, the children are required to 'Drop Everything and Read'.

"We have reintroduced the Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) programme that was introduced to us by the ministry some time ago. We also have the Children's Own in our school, which we also encourage the children to buy, and the teachers give them activities from it," Lewis said.

Jamaica is now 7.6 per cent away from achieving the target of 85 per cent of students in the grade four age cohort achieving mastery of literacy skills by 2015.