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There’s an enduring crisis in South Africa, the effects of which will continue to be felt for decades to come. Its impact is far reaching, from sprawling city to rural farmland. It does not discriminate against age, race or class, but its destruction is felt most deeply among the poor. It is a crisis that perpetuates inequality and poverty, and has the power to bring the country to its knees.

The crisis? Illiteracy.

The state of literacy in South Africa

According to recent research, 58% of Grade 4 learners in South Africa cannot read for meaning, while 29% are completely illiterate^[1]. This confirms research findings gathered by NEEDU in 2013 which show that of 1,772 rural Grade 5 learners, 41% read so slowly that they were considered non-readers in English, while 11% could not read a single English word from the passage used to assess their reading fluency. While the sample of learners assessed in the NEEDU research may not have been fully reflective of all of South Africa’s schools, it demonstrates a disturbingly high number of children who are unable to read in their fifth year of schooling.

The A, B, Cs of Literacy

What is behind South Africa’s literacy epidemic? To begin to unpack these statistics, we firstly need to understand how a child learns to read.

The foundation for literacy is built long before a child begins Grade 1. It starts while still in nappies. Learning to talk, listen and understand are precursors to identifying letters and sounds, and eventually words and whole sentences.

Once children are able to decode what they read, they can begin to understand its meaning. This newfound ability to “read for meaning” opens up a world of learning, and is the very skill upon which the rest of a child’s school career depends.

Learning to Read In A South African Context

Many of South Africa’s children are already at a disadvantage before they even begin school. This is because children from low-income families hear on average 30 million fewer words than their affluent peers by the age of three. This alone has a significant impact on their ability to hone basic literacy skills and achieve in school.

Once children start primary school, an additional set of compounding challenges emerge. With 11 official languages in South Africa, 70% of Grade 1 to 3 learners are taught in an African language. When learners reach Grade 4, the majority of them are then instructed in English. This approach is based on research that indicates that children acquire English language skills more easily when they receive instruction in their mother tongue in Grades 1 to 3^[2].

However, many learners have not mastered reading for meaning in their first language by the end of Grade 3. The lack of basic literacy skills combined with a poor grasp of a second language (typically English) further inhibits their ability to master literacy skills in the transition to a second language from Grade 4. As a result their struggle to read for meaning or comprehend the curriculum is exacerbated.

The Language of Exclusion

Without the ability to understand what they read in English, learners are unable to engage with what is being taught and as a result, are “silently excluded”.

They are excluded from engaging with every aspect of the formal curriculum, which from Grade 4 presupposes both the ability to decode (read) independently and the ability to read for meaning, making links between passages of text and one’s own experiences or knowledge.

With every school day spent struggling unsuccessfully over the hieroglyphs of English sounds and words, these learners lose learning time and fall behind. They cannot recover this lost ground. The texts become more complicated, and the gap widens.

They are haunted by poor academic performance for the rest of their school careers. Evidence shows that students who have fallen behind in school by Grade 4 struggle to achieve educational outcomes by Grade 12^[3].

This is excruciating punishment for more than half of the 10-year-olds in South Africa.

Excluded and unable to catch up, learners become demotivated and disengaged, disillusioned that there is any hope or future for them inside of the school system. With this in mind, it is not surprising that 50% of South Africa’s learners drop out of school, leaving without any formal qualification^[4].

The challenge of learning to read in a second language is just the tip of the illiteracy iceberg according to RESEP’s latest report, Laying Firm Foundations: Getting Reading Right. RESEP identifies four other culprits behind mass illiteracy in South Africa: insufficient policy for early childhood development and primary schooling; weaknesses in the relationship between teacher, student and curriculum content, known as the instructional core; home background; and extreme class sizes in the Foundation Phase.

As RESEP and others have highlighted, the cause of illiteracy in South Africa is multi-faceted and perpetuating, and so too are its consequences.

The Cost of Inaction

Illiteracy breeds exclusion in every area of society, and it comes with a hefty price tag. In 2010, it was estimated that illiteracy costs South Africa R450 billion^[5] each year, and it’s not difficult to see why.

Between 2010 and 2015, only half of the learners that began school in Grade 2 reached Matric^[6]. Although there are a number of other factors that contribute to the high dropout rate, illiteracy is a huge contributor.

With little education, no skills and limited access to opportunities, more than half of South Africa’s youth are unemployed^[7]. Rife unemployment in turn entrenches cycles of poverty and places significant strain on South Africa’s resources, so much so that it is estimated that South Africa’s GDP would be 23% – 30% higher if the population was fully literate^[8].

However, the consequences of illiteracy go beyond Rand values. Illiterate individuals are largely excluded from participating in civil society due to their inability to access essential information, such as knowing their rights. The impact of exclusion is also seen in the area of health, where illiterate individuals are unable to access knowledge on health, hygiene and nutrition; access quality medical care; and heed warnings on medication.

Illiteracy also begets illiteracy. According to UNESCO^[9], children of illiterate parents tend to not complete their primary education, placing work before education.

Tipping Point

Researchers, like the men and women behind the RESEP and NEEDU reports, have sounded the alarm, and the truth is out. It is clear that we as a country have a lot of work to do.

And with that, we have hope. The crisis can be solved.

David Harrison of the DG Murray Trust highlights this hope, pointing out that “Unlike many of our other national crises, illiteracy is one that is firmly within our power and resources to address quite quickly – and in doing so, we’ll address some of our more intractable crises like unemployment at their roots.”

How quickly we take action today will determine the prosperity of our people and economy for decades to come. We cannot afford to settle for slow progress any longer.

References

^[1] Spaull, N. (2016a). Learning to Read and Reading to Learn. Policy Brief. Research on Socioeconomic Policy (RESEP). (Online). Available: www.resep.sun.ac.za

^[2] Taylor, S. & Von Fintel, M. (2016). Estimating the impact of language of instruction in South African primary schools: A fixed effects approach. Economics of Education Review 50(1): pp75–89.

^[3] Van der Berg, S. (2015). What the annual national assessments can tell us about the learning deficits over the education system and the school career. South African Journal of Childhood Education 5(2): 28–43.

^[4] Statistics South Africa, (2014). Quarterly Labour Force Survey Quarter 2.

^[5] Gustafsson, M., van der Berg, S., Shepherd, D. Burger, C. (2010). The Costs Of Illiteracy In South Africa. Stellenbosch University. (Online). Available: https://ideas.repec.org/p/sza/wpaper/wpapers113.html

^[6] Equal Education (2015). PRESS STATEMENT: Upcoming 2015 Matric Results Require Careful Scrutiny! (Online), Available: https://www.equaleducation.org.za/article/2016-01-03-upcoming-2015-matric-results-require-careful-scrutiny

^[7] Stats SA, (2014). Labour Market Dynamics In South Africa Report

^[8] Gustafsson, M., van der Berg, S., Shepherd, D. Burger, C. (2010). The Costs Of Illiteracy In South Africa. Stellenbosch University. (Online). Available: https://ideas.repec.org/p/sza/wpaper/wpapers113.html

^[9] Martinez, R., Fernandez, A. (2010). The Social and Economic Impact of Illiteracy. UNESCO. (Online) Available: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001905/190571E.pdf