Cape Town - As children’s literacy declined nationally, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) said it was revising its national reading strategy to improve teaching and learning.
The department said it was focusing on designing a learner-teacher support material package, to help children learn to read, especially in their home language during their formative years.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga, joined by her departmental officials, briefed the media on Sunday, on developments in the sector, including reading literacy.
This follows the 2021 Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS), which showed in South Africa, about 81% of Grade 4s and 56% of Grade 6 learners could not read for meaning in any language, including their home language.
The DBE's director for national assessment, Dr Mark Chetty, said the Covid-19 pandemic had disrupted education systems globally, affecting the most vulnerable learners the hardest.
“Prior to Covid-19 and the latest PIRLS release there was good progress made in the system and in reading.
“The loss of teacher time and study time had an impact. We need to strengthen the reading skills especially of boy learners, girls are ahead,” said Chetty.
He said key findings from the assessment included that learners had found the PIRLS passages difficult to answer both for literacy and informational texts.
The DBE’s chief director of Foundations for Learning, Kulula Manona, said a number of reading literacy interventions have been implemented across provinces.
“We are finalising the revised national reading strategy.
“The revised strategy, refining policy to explicitly guide the development of reading literacy will include the rolling out of a comprehensive early grade reading programme, incorporating proven best practices.
“The primary focus on Home Language literacy, with added support for English as a first additional language.
Teacher training focuses on Home Language literacy and EFAL instructional methods and using LTMS package,” she said.
In the new strategy, there was a shift to focus from English as a First Additional Language, to Home Language, based on international and local evidence.
African home language materials, including graded readers, decidable texts and alphabet freezes would also be prioritised.
“Over the past month there has been a raging debate about reading in schools. The magnitude of our declines relating to the pandemic does not come as a surprise.
“South Africa was among the countries most actively gauging impacts on learning outcomes during the pandemic. All of this is concerning and informs the government's emphasis on addressing reading at the foundation phase. But it is not true that most learners cannot read and write at all, as some have put it.
“One of the points we sought to make is that we are not competing but merely participating to bench-mark against the best in the world. It is also important to reiterate the fact that we are one of only three countries in Africa brave enough to participate in PIRLS. We were also the only country to put forward all our official languages in the study,” said Motshekga.
Cape Times