The Brunei Reading and Language Acquisition Project

The Ministry of Education of Brunei Darussalam, keen to improve the teaching of English in its primary schools, decided to introduce an English language project modeled on Singaporeʹs REAP program. The Brunei Reading and Language Acquisition Project (RELA) started in 1989, for Year 1 students in 20 pilot schools. After a series of evaluation studies had shown positive benefits, it was extended to all 120 primary schools in the state. Over the first three years, 38 out of 41 measures showed statistically significant improvements relative to comparison groups and surveys of teacher opinion were very positive. External evaluations have confirmed the benefits, and the Ministry has extended the principles of the project to the upper primary school, where Sustained Silent Reading has become a daily part of the program. Although a recent comprehensive review team found that most of the schools were still implementing basic RELA methodology, there were specific areas that needed attention for future improvement. The main recommendation of this review was to develop a structure to encourage collaboration among different sectors of the educational community for sustaining and improving on change. Field projects like these demonstrate how difficult it is to implement research ideas and they highlight the importance of attention to how educational change is to be achieved and sustained.