Shock child reading figures show we need radical action

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) 2016 results were released by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga on Tuesday. To say that they are anything but devastating would be a lie.

About 78% of Grade 4 pupils cannot read — that’s eight out of every 10 children of that age in the country — not in English, not in their home language, not in any language. Among Setswana and Sepedi home-language pupils the figure is more than 90%.

After four years of fulltime schooling, most pupils cannot understand what they read, if they can decode the words at all. Simple questions, workbook exercises, even the most basic storybook — these are meaningless to them. And unless children are taught how to read, the country has failed them before they’ve even started.

The report’s five most important findings are:

Eight of 10 Grade 4 children cannot read for meaning. That is to say that they could not reach the lowest international Pirls benchmark in reading. They could not locate and retrieve explicitly stated information.

SA lags far behind other countries. In the US, the ratio of Grade 4 pupils who cannot read is only 4% and in England, it is just 3%. However, the study also included middle-income countries. In Iran, 35% of Grade 4 pupils could not read for meaning and in Chile, it was only 13%.

The reading crisis is deeper than previously thought. Previous estimates of illiteracy were based on different benchmarks, which it is now known, were far too easy. The correct benchmarks for reading for meaning, revealed on Tuesday, show that the real figure is 78%.

Reading scores have been stagnant since 2011. There has been no improvement in reading scores over the past six years, from 2011 to 2016. There was, however, an improvement in reading scores from 2006 to 2011.

SA’s gender gap in reading is the world’s second-highest. In Grade 4, girls are a full year ahead of boys in reading. This gender gap is the secondlargest among all 50 countries that participate, and grew from 2011 to 2016.

It is not that previous ANC officials and policy makers weren’t trying. Naledi Pandor implemented the National Reading Strategy in 2006 and the Foundations for Learning campaign in 2008.

Motshekga helped to stabilise the education system with a new curriculum and is backing the single, bright shining star among reading interventions in the form of the Early Grade Reading

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Study. But it is like fighting forest fires with buckets.

Moving the needle in education will require a radical rethinking of both what’s needed and what’s possible. What is not needed, is another steering committee, another convening of experts, another 12-point plan. The country does not need another lengthy speech or moving statement telling it how committed the government is to solving the reading crisis, and to “our children’s futures”.

What SA needs, is to decide what Japan decided in 1872 — that “there must be no community with an illiterate family, nor a family with an illiterate person”. This became Japan’s Fundamental Code of Education, the core of its development strategy, and they actually did it.

Within decades, they had eradicated illiteracy.

What SA needs is to decide what Cuba decided in 1961, when it implemented the Cuban Literacy Campaign. They galvanised a million Cubans to systematically eliminate illiteracy across the country. It worked.

JAPAN DECIDED IN 1872 THAT ‘THERE MUST BE NO COMMUNITY WITH AN ILLITERATE FAMILY, NOR A FAMILY WITH AN ILLITERATE PERSON’

What SA needs is a Marshall Plan for reading. The country — business, civil society and the government — should mobilise behind one goal: that all children can read for meaning by the end of Grade 3.

When eight out of 10 of SA’s children can’t read for meaning, overcoming this challenge might seem impossible. But insurmountable problems are not new to SA. In 2000, at the peak of the HIV/AIDS crisis, who would have thought that 4-million South Africans would now be on antiretrovirals? Or that civil society and the government would mobilise to build the world’s largest HIV/AIDS treatment programme?

It is now time for SA to build the largest childhood literacy programme in the world. Systemic illiteracy is the binding constraint on the country’s economic growth.

It is no longer enough for the AngloGolds and FNBs of the world to donate a few million to their charitable foundations and think they have discharged their corporate social responsibility. Corporate SA should bind itself to solving this dire problem — no matter the economic cost. Business should come to the party.