Literacy allows people to decode the world that surrounds them and write their own history. It gives them the ability to control their life and helps them to become independent member of the society. Literacy is the key to assessing written knowledge and knowledge is power (Kassam, 1989). Illiteracy is a form of exclusion. Society has polarized in those who have the means and the ways to improve their social and material position and those who cannot do that, in this group more often than not one can find the group of illiterate people (Lourie, 1990).

Having in mind the power of literacy and the how it affects people’s lives – in a supportive way if one acquires it and to an almost destructive way if one does not – the present study aims at exploring the negative effects of functional illiteracy on secondary students educational, social and emotional states. Additionally, the study investigates whether the excepted unfavorable effects of illiteracy can be at least partly reversed with the aid of a remedial program that not only focuses on giving knowledge to students but also attempts to give emotional support to struggling secondary school students in order to boost their self-confidence and in turn better their academic performance, hence starting a positive cycle.

The present study firstly presents the remedial program including its origins, aims and operation; secondly, it explores the self-esteem of struggling secondary school students in comparison with normal achievers and goes on to investigate the assumed positive effects of a remedial literacy program on the students’ self-concept. There are various constructs of self-concept that are dealt with in the present study, i.e., general, social, parental, and academic self-concept (including reading self-concept: attitudes, confidence and difficulty).

The findings of the study provide support for the suggestion of a close relationship between self-concept and academic achievement and support the notion that the remedial program helps students not only at an educational level but also at a deeper emotional level.