While schools throughout Moose Jaw have worked day-in-day-out to ensure the first semester of the 2020-2021 school year went as smoothly as it did, there is one side-effect to the pandemic that has come up; literacy in younger students.

Director of Education with the Prairie South School Division, Tony Baldwin.

"We do some regular work with our kids, evaluating where they are, and we are concerned about our youngest students and some of our reading results this fall. The best gift you can give your kids at Christmas is a little bit of time and a little bit of reading. It doesn't cost anything and it's something that pays off for those kids for the rest of their lives."

Baldwin says that kids learn by very specific instructions from qualified teachers, and while they've had that in the fall, it hasn't always been there since the start of the year.

"We just lost some time with teachers and kids and that instructional practice that leads to good reading outcomes. We need to make that up somehow, whether it's time with teachers or additional time with parents reading to their kids. We really need to attend to that and make sure our kids are doing well."

Baldwin goes on to say that this isn't just a Prairie South issue, but something all divisions are facing, and that those lacking literacy skills were kids in Kindergarten to Grade 3. He said going into the new year, the division will be pushing hard on reading, writing, and math literacy to try and get kids back on track to where they need to be.