Dear Kinyeti Academy supporters and friends,

As you may know, Kinyeti Academy is committed to providing a world-class academic program that will prepare students for globally competitive universities so that they can establish themselves as leaders, innovators, and social builders in South Sudan.

To achieve that mission, we must recruit high-capacity, highly motivated students who will succeed in a heavily accelerated 4th to 8th grade instructional program that is delivered in English. However, given the virtually collapsed state of primary education in South Sudan, our first level of instruction for even our best students focuses on solidifying foundational skills with words and numbers.

Most of our new students start by learning letter names and sounds, then by blending sounds to construct words. They practice reading aloud with teachers to develop accuracy, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Regular dictation strengthens their ability to connect spoken sounds with written letters, spell accurately, and construct sentences.

Students advance only after demonstrating mastery at each stage, and we are seeing substantial literacy gains among our students as a result. On average, a Kinyeti student’s reading speed increases by 18 percent in their first six months, with progress accelerating further from there.

Most of our students do know some basic English at entry. But we have also worked with a handful who start from zero, a truly challenging test for our teaching methods. One such student is Dominic Natel.

Putting Our Literacy Model to the Test

Dominic grew up herding livestock in rural South Sudan. After a violent raid wiped out his family’s cattle, he enrolled in a local school. Yet when he joined Kinyeti in February 2025 at age 15, Dominic had no functional English literacy, could not recognize the English alphabet, and spoke only Diding’a, his tribal language.

Diding’a is not standardized, and his teacher did not speak it. Translation was therefore not an option. He had to learn English rapidly and from the ground up, through carefully structured instruction.

We started with the basics: phonics. This was followed by intensive decoding practice, along with regular feedback and progress checks with his teachers. The work and the process were demanding and highly repetitive, but Dominic remained determined, persistent, and uncomplaining. His work effort was inspiring.

Today, after 18 months of literacy instruction, Dominic has achieved a reading rate of 44 words per minute. This is astounding progress considering he did not know the English alphabet when we admitted him. Beyond his overall academic growth, the greatest transformation we have witnessed is his confidence. When it is his turn, he now effectively leads morning assembly and participates fully in school activities.

The Next Chapter for Literacy at Kinyeti

The takeaway from Dominic’s story is clear: quick leaps in literacy are possible. And once they are made, a student can move quickly into an accelerated content learning program.

Our experience with Dominic has affirmed the direction our teaching model is now taking with all students. We are:

• Making systematic phonics the foundation of the literacy program

• Training every literacy teacher in explicit reading instruction

• Assessing decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension as separate skills

We are increasingly confident that as long as we continue to recruit students with high capacity, motivation, and perseverance, we can consistently move them rapidly toward foundational literacy mastery. That is where South Sudan’s leadership pipeline begins.