The 2030 Reading Panel released in Johannesburg on Tuesday starkly revealed that 80% of Grade 3 South African learners cannot read for meaning in any language.
The panel was formulated in 2022 to spotlight South Africa’s stunted reading skills plaguing early-grade level schoolchildren.
While 81% of Grade 4 learners struggle with literacy skills, the 2022 South African Systemic Evaluation (SASE) reported that 20% of Grade 3 learners performed at grade level or above for reading in their home language.
Secretariat of the Reading Panel Siphumelele Lucwaba lamented in a radio interview that SA’s education system is facing a serious literacy and numeracy skills problem.
“There is new data, and unfortunately, it is the same story on a different day,” she said.
The SASE found that nearly 70% of Grade 6 learners have not achieved grade-level reading skills in the language of learning and teaching, being English or Afrikaans.
The panel highlighted that the education system is producing twice the required number of high school teachers, compared to the half that is produced in foundation phase.
Lucwaba also sounded an alarm that the education system is not producing the right batch of teachers to accommodate South Africa’s weak reading environment.
She cited a study, which stated that only 2% to 10% of foundation phase teachers specialise in literacy and maths modules in higher education institutions.
“A foundation phase teacher only does Literacy, Maths and Life Skills; and around 2% to 10% focuses on those skills. We are not producing the right kind of teachers, we are not producing enough teachers,” said Lucwaba.
She further decried that SA educators are “highly” unprepared to undertake class environments that will produce learners with exceptional literacy skills.
“These these teachers are highly unprepared for the kind of environment they are in to teach these learners to read for meaning in the correct language,” said Lucwaba.
The report indicated some African languages are severely underrepresented, with as few as 20% of the necessary Language of Learning and Teaching (LOLT)-specific teachers being produced.
The 2030 Reading Panel further underscored that Grade R and Early Childhood Development (ECD) education would need an injection of R18 billion from National Treasury.
This is twice the estimated 2026/27 budget allocation, and five times the current subsidy respectively.
The National Treasury planned to set aside R10bn to ECD programmes in the draft budget before it was postponed to March 12, as members of the multiparty government are disagreeing on increasing VAT to two percent points to 17%.
Media reports stated this budget allocation would have increased the daily subsidy per child from R17 to R24, allowing 700 000 more children under their toddler years to access ECD learning.
The panel said underfunding early childhood education would overwhelm an already strained education system.
Among other solutions, the panel said all foundation phase classrooms should receive quality reading resources to resolve South Africa’s early-grade reading challenge.
The Star