Early halt to adult literacy drive
Education departments shirk accountability on demise of the literacy and numeracy programme
More than 2.5-million beneficiaries of the government’s flagship literacy programme will have their hopes of furthering their studies dashed as the education initiative nears the end of its run.
Illiterate adults, who were taught how to read and write through the department of basic education’s R4.4-billion mass literacy campaign, had hoped that the department would offer them the chance to progress to the next level of study.
Known as Kha ri Gude, which means “let us learn” in Venda, the mass literacy campaign prepared its students for a qualification known as AET (adult education and training) level one, which was roughly equivalent to the education received by a grade three learner.
The adult students were keen on moving to AET level two — the equivalent of grade five.
But the basic education department this week said the department of higher education and training was responsible for providing adult education.
Kha ri Gude’s former chief executive, Veronica McKay, and John Aitchison, an emeritus professor in adult education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the campaign should have been extended to include AET level two so that what learners learnt during Kha ri Gude could have been consolidated.
In 2014, only 21 000 students, who had mostly completed their AET level one through the Kha ri Gude programme, enrolled for AET level two at the department of higher education’s public adult learning centres.
The department of basic education’s director general, Mathanzima Mweli, says the Kha ri Gude programme was being phased out because it was not attracting many beneficiaries. “We are redirecting the resources to where they are needed,” he says.
Morongwa Ramarumo, the department’s chief director of the campaign, admits she would have liked to have offered students the option of moving to AET level two because the former public adult learning centres were far from their homes.
She says that more than 60% of the students had indicated that they were keen to continue learning.
“If I had a budget, I would go to level two but AET level two and above is the domain of the department of higher education,” says Ramarumo.
She concedes that, although higher education was absorbing some of the Kha ri Gude graduates, the department could not absorb all of them.
“With Kha ri Gude, you can recruit people from the same vicinity and then teach them at a time that’s agreed upon between the students and the educator. With the public adult learning centres, not all elderly people will be able to attend because it could be far from their homes.”
McKay says: “It is a great pity that Kha ri Gude did not continue into AET level two, which would have ensured that [the students] consolidate what they have learned and that they acquire the skills to apply their learning to life situations. Now that they have learned to read, the next level would help them to read to learn.”
She says AET level two would have assisted them to “deepen their knowledge and confidence”.
“The progression [from AET level one to two] hasn’t been catered for. It’s much more sustainable if you took them to the next level. There are four million people who went through Kha ri Gude floating around,” she says.
“Unfortunately, the takeup of students into the mainstream AET system through the department of higher education has been slow. Our follow-up research has shown that Kha ri Gude students prefer learning in small community groups that involve minimal travel and at times that are convenient to themselves,” she says.
McKay says the students were not going to the next level, adding: “Unfortunately, they become lost to the system and I think this is where the tragedy is.”
The programme was launched by Naledi Pandor, then minister of basic education, in 2008 and would have reached some 4.7-million illiterate adults by the time it comes to its planned end in March 2017.
McKay says the campaign taught students basic maths, which assisted them in drawing up a household budget, for example. They were also taught how to write their names and tell the time, and eventually this culminated in writing a letter to the current minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga, thanking her for giving them the opportunity to participate in the campaign.
But, Aitchison says: “The public adult learning centres were pretty dysfunctional, underfinanced and badly managed.” They were “not growing” and attendance of AET level one and two learners was dwindling.
Marjorie Jobson, director of Khulumani Support Group, an organisation comprising about 85 000 survivors of apartheid-era human rights violations, says the worst prevalence of illiteracy was in the rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
“We find this massive problem of illiteracy when we have to make submissions to the department of justice [by] drawing on our membership to respond to very sophisticated draft regulations published in the government gazette,” she says.
A co-ordinator of the Kha ri Gude campaign in the Ekurhuleni metropolitan municipality of Gauteng says the project’s discontinuation would disadvantage people from rural areas who can’t read and write.
Bheki Mahlobo, the acting deputy director general for community education and training in the department of higher education, confirmed that basic education had held discussions with them on a strategy to absorb the Kha ri Gude graduates.
“At any given time, the number of students to be absorbed is also influenced by the available resources.”
He said that the department was also trying to provide more funding to the former public adult learning centres to “absorb” more learners.