Campaign red-flags literacy crisis
Rhodes VC compares current reading deficit to apartheid education harm
Failing to ensure that SA children can read and understand what they’re reading is condemning them to a life without a future.
In a damning comparison, Rhodes University vice chancellor Dr Sizwe Mabizela suggested that, in effect, there was little difference between apartheid education’s goal of restricting opportunities for black people, and the current shocking statistic that only 19% of SA’s grade 4 pupils can read for meaning.
Mabizela was the keynote speaker at the Eastern Cape launch of the Right to Read campaign at Fikizolo Primary School in Makhanda on Thursday October 19. The campaign is spearheaded by the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), which holds that failing to ensure children have the skill needed to understand basic concepts is not just an educational handicap, but a fundamental violation of their rights.
Guests were welcomed to the launch by SAHRC commissioner, advocate Andre Guam. Other alliance partners in the campaign include the Legal Resources Centre, Equal
Education, the Centre for Child Law, Section 27 and the Equal Education Law Centre.
In May 2023, Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga revealed the alarming statistic from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2021 that only 19% of SA’s grade 4 pupils can read for meaning.
The R2R campaign aims to mobilise civil society, the education sector in particular, to make early grade literacy a national priority and to have this reflected through legislative reform. Mabizela pulled no punches. “Apartheid education was designed with the express purpose of entrenching and supporting apartheid ideology,” he said. He juxtaposed the results of the PIRLS assessment, saying they were a serious indictment on all South Africans individually, collectively and the state.
“Failure to ensure children can read for understanding] amounts to condemning the young people of our country to a life without a future, a life with no hope,” Mabizela said.
Reminding his audience that the right to a basic education is set out in Section 29 (1) (a) of the constitution, he said: “It is therefore not just a social
justice matter: it is a constitutional imperative.”
“Fulfilling the right to a basic education is what unlocks all the other rights enshrined in the constitution and makes it possible for them to contribute and participate meaningfully in their community,” he said.
Legal Resources Centre’s Cameron McConnachie referred to the projection that it would take 86 years to correct the deficit and said: “That’s 2108: something has to be done!”
SA was not short on policies, frameworks and strategies that had been developed in the past 20 years to address the reading crisis in the foundation phase. These included Drop Everything and Read, Read to Lead, the Early Grade Reading Studies, the 2008 National Reading Strategy, the Eastern Cape’s Reading Plan 2019–2023 and the Western Cape Reading Strategy 2020–2025.
But these were not laws.
“As excellent as many of these policies may be, they are not binding.
“They do not set standards or procedures that must be followed.”
While budgets were sometimes made available to fund the implementation of the campaigns and policies, these were discretionary, and the state could move funds away from them as they pleased. Many policies were not well understood by those who needed to implement them, and in some cases, they might not even be aware of them.
“There is also a real threat of policy overlap and contradiction, with multiple role-players pushing different policies and interventions.”
The R2R campaign proposes binding regulations, drawn up by the DBE and provincial education department’s own experts on literacy, with input from the public (including teachers, academics, and civil society).
This, Right to Read believes, would provide the much needed, binding blueprint for improving literacy levels as quickly as possible.
Speakers at Thursday’s launch made it clear that correcting the literacy deficit was not something that could be left to the government.
“It’s also our collective responsibility,” Mabizela said.
“Together with the rule of law, there needs to be a vibrant, active civil society.”
McConnachie emphasised that while the campaign sought legal reform as a way to secure children’s rights, it recognised that this needed the support of the whole community including parents and teachers.
The campaign was also intended to be realistic in what it could push for.
“We might not be able to make it a rule that every parent spends 30 minutes a day reading to their child, but there are things that can be regulated,” McConnachie said.
The campaign proposes the regulations include the so-called four T’s: time, text, teaching and testing.
“Much of this is already there in the department’s policies but is not carried out,” McConnachie said.
He said the proposed regulations were not intended as a guide to best teaching practice, or another level of bureaucracy, or as a cure for the problem.
“We are also not replacing the good work already done on literacy: this is adding another layer.”