New data points to solutions for SA’s child literacy woes

We’ve all seen the headlines about how our 10-year-olds can’t read for meaning and how poorly South Africa’s children do compared with those in other countries. But we need to move forward and set reasonable targets so we can clearly see why we have this problem and what can be done to change it, said Dr Nompumelelo Nyathi-Mohohlwane, the director: reading in the Department of Basic Education (DBE).

She was speaking at the first Funda Uphumelele National Survey (Funs), which measures the reading ability of children in grades 1 to 3.

We need to understand what’s below the tip of the iceberg, is the analogy she uses.

That’s what the Department of Basic eEducation has been doing for the past seven years. Teams of linguists and data analysts have painstakingly researched the skills and markers that show how children learn to read in each of the 11 official languages. This helped to establish reading benchmarks for each of the foundation phase grades.

Then the department conducted a survey, which assessed 27,838 learners in 710 public schools across all the provinces and in all 11 languages, and measured the percentage of children who reach the critical reading benchmarks by the end of grades 1, 2 and 3.

The results were released in November, and they are far from fun.

Only about one in three children – an alarmingly low statistic – reached minimum benchmarks for reading set for each of the grades in their home language. This means that “a staggering two million children are not at the minimum required reading level in the foundation phase”, a 2030 Reading Panel summary states.

Worse than that, 15% of children could not read a single word by the end of Grade 3. That means that in a classroom of 40 children, there could be six who cannot read.

These results are shocking, but they shouldn’t really surprise us given previous surveys like the Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (Pirls), which assesses Grade 4 reading comprehension, and the South African Systemic Evaluation (Sase), which assesses Grade 3s.

What’s different this time, though, is that it is possible to identify which parts of reading are not successful. There are now clear measurable benchmarks for reading in 11 languages and each grade that include skills that can be taught using proven methods.

The context

In grades 1, 2 and 3, which is when children are taught how to read, they can attend a school where they are taught in their home language, but many of them don’t.

Children learn to read most effectively in the language they understand best, which is their home language, said Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube at the release of the results.

“When you learn to join the letters, i-n-d-l-u together to form a word – indlu – the lights will come on if you know what that word means (a house),” said Gwarube.

Having a solid foundation in their home language made it easier for children to build bilingual proficiency, which for most children in this country meant learning English as a first additional language usually from Grade 4, she said.

Yet English is the most common language of teaching and learning in South Africa. About 30% of the Grade 1, 2 and 3 learners who took part in the survey were assessed in English because of this, even though it’s the home language of only about 10% of them.

IsiZulu is the most commonly spoken home language, followed by IsiXhosa.

What are the targets?

Learning to read is a complex process that culminates in written reading comprehension, but there are a range of subskills that have to be mastered before a child can understand.

For example, a child must be able to produce the correct sound represented by a letter in a particular language. The Grade 1 benchmark is that a child should correctly sound out 40 letters in a minute.

Another example is the ability to accurately read a narrative text – one that is grade and context appropriate – in a particular language. A minimum number of correct words a child should be able to read in a passage per minute (CWPM) was established for grades 2 and 3. These minimums are not the same for all languages.

Learners who read below these fluency rates are unlikely to access higher order reading skills and are unlikely to comprehend what they are reading.

Dr Nyathi-Mohohlwane made it clear why language-specific benchmarks have to be language specific. The text: “There was a stranger who was very hungry. He came to a village and asked for food. Nobody had any food,” is a 21-word text in English, but translates into 11 words in IsiZulu and 33 words in Sepedi.

Learners assessed in English do better

Beyond the disappointing low overall levels of reading achievement, the survey found that learners who were assessed in English were the most likely to reach the reading benchmarks.

But some interesting details surface in the data. In Grade 1, a higher proportion of the children who were assessed in Afrikaans, IsiXhosa and Sesotho reached the benchmark of reading 40 correct letter sounds per minute, than in the other seven languages.

But by Grade 3 the percentage reaching the benchmarks in those three languages had all dropped. In grades 2 and 3 the benchmarks changed from letter sounding to reading a minimum number of words in a minute, so this drop could indicate something about the way these skills are taught in those languages.

On the other hand, a smaller percentage of children assessed in IsiZulu achieved the Grade 1 benchmarks. But by Grade 3 this had turned around and the proportion who reached the benchmarks was higher than all but those assessed in English and Tshivenḓa.

Even though there are advantages in learning to read in one’s home language, many of the children who took part in the survey were not assessed in theirs. Only 33% of those who were assessed in English spoke English at home, the survey found.

Where you live matters

In Gauteng and the Western Cape a higher percentage of learners reached the benchmarks than in any of the other provinces. In Gauteng 64% of schools teach in English. In the Western Cape 40% of the schools teach in English and 38% teach in Afrikaans.