In 2015, a Supreme Court of Appeal judgment held that every pupil in South African schools must be provided with a textbook in every subject at the beginning of the academic year. The judgment (Minister of Basic Education v Basic Education for All) opened with two quotes.
First, from the American abolitionist Frederick Douglas who escaped slavery: “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
Second, from Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary-general: “Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratisation, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.”
How do we reconcile these quotes – and the findings of the court – with the fact that 81% of Grade 4 pupils in South Africa still cannot read with comprehension, and that these devastating reading outcomes are from the poorest pupils attending no-fee schools and whose mother tongue is an African language?
Our Constitution entrenches the right to basic education. The courts have built on this right case by case, ruling that it must be realised immediately rather than gradually. Along the way, they have spelled out what it actually requires: textbooks, school infrastructure, nutrition, desks and chairs, and scholar transport.
Given the devastatingly poor reading outcomes and their likely consequences for persisting inequality, the inputs for a basic education must be recognised as components of the right. However, literacy as an outcome must also be recognised as such. This will place a clear obligation on the government to take immediate steps to ensure that every pupil can read with comprehension in Grade 4.
Over the years there have been many rhetorical statements from successive presidents and ministers of basic education prioritising literacy, but this rhetoric has not translated into effective action. There have also been reading plans and programmes at national and provincial level, but these have been disparate and fragmented, haphazardly implemented and poorly budgeted for. The most recent, the 2023 National Literacy Strategy and Plan, has been criticised for its vagueness in terms of responsibilities, implementation timelines, milestones, measurement and funding mechanisms.
While there are proactive provinces that have implemented their own evidence-based reading inputs and interventions, many of which are funded through a combination of provincial and donor resources, there is no standardisation across provinces. This means that geography is another determinant of whether a pupil might be left behind.
Among education researchers, however, there is a growing body of uncontested, strategic interventions recommended to improve literacy. Civil society advocates and researchers have encapsulated these under four Ts. These, it is suggested, form part of the right to read and should therefore be promulgated as binding national regulations.
The four Ts are:
Teaching: Teacher knowledge and skills in reading pedagogy across all languages must improve for literacy rates to improve. This requires uniform training for the foundation phase across universities, and teachers already in the system must complete in-service training. Currently there are insufficient numbers of students being trained in the foundation phase;
Text: This refers to the required minimum package of reading materials that are necessary for foundational literacy. These include teacher guides, graded readers, big books and classroom resources (friezes, flashcards, posters and handwriting charts);
Time: This requires that sufficient time is allocated to, and actually spent on literacy activities. The National Curriculum Statement (CAPS) for the foundation phase sets out the time allocation for reading, but there are suggestions that these allocations are insufficient for learning to read and must be reviewed; and
Tests: This refers to implementing regular, universal, standardised assessments of reading at the foundation phase to serve as a diagnostic in identifying reading problems. The controversial Annual National Assessment introduced in 2011 to grades 1 to 6 and Grade 9 pupils to assess literacy and numeracy skills was abolished in 2014.
The codification of these inputs and interventions into binding regulations is more likely to provide accountability across the different tiers of basic education governance. Lessons from countries such as Brazil – which has seen radical improvements in reading outcomes in certain areas because of political will – reminds us that political leadership is one of the most important elements of large-scale educational reform, so let us see it in South Africa with urgency. DM
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