A key focus area during the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE’s) presentation to the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education was the Right to Read Campaign, where literacy interventions and the need for stronger alignment between departmental strategies and reading outcomes were discussed.
The Right to Read Campaign, represented by Mr Fanelesibonge Ndebele, Ms Siphumelele Lucwaba and Mr Cameron McConnachie, outlined the three pillars of the Campaign: advocacy and communications; a legal and education stream focused on research and the development of regulations; and community mobilisation. Findings indicated that 15% of learners could not read by the end of Grade 3 after several years of schooling. In some languages, including Sepedi and Xitsonga, this figure rose to 25%. Ms Lucwaba indicated that successful interventions combined quality teacher training; effective learning and teaching support materials; and structured support measures such as teacher coaches or teaching assistants. Mr McConnachie proposed that literacy regulations should focus on the four Ts: text, training, time, and testing. He urged for the adoption of binding reading regulations as a way of strengthening literacy policies and improving implementation across the education system.
Ms Keitumetse Modiba, DBE’s Director for School Curriculum Implementation and Quality Improvement, stated that children did not begin learning to read only once they entered formal schooling; the foundations of reading began developing long before formal schooling started. She explained that children acquired foundational skills such as listening, speaking and singing, before they began formal schooling, and that these experiences contributed significantly to later literacy development.
She explained that the literacy intervention programme in the Mpumalanga Province specifically targeted two of the five minority African languages predominantly spoken in the province, namely IsiNdebele and Siswati. Through this intervention, the Department had provided 555 schools with graded readers in these languages and classroom library boxes to allow learners to engage with books, not only at school but also at home, as learners were permitted to take books home for reading purposes. The project employed early grade youth assistants to support literacy teaching in Grades 1, 2, and 3 within participating schools. One of the key findings was that many youth assistants felt inadequately exposed to reading methodologies and techniques for teaching reading during their initial teacher education at university level. In response, the project had ensured that all participating teachers and school management teams underwent targeted training on methodologies for teaching reading, as well as assessment approaches for various literacy and reading components. The Mpumalanga literacy support programme was only one example, and several other literacy interventions were being implemented in other provinces.
Dr Janeli Kotze, ECD Director, responded that the primary focus was on pre-literacy skills and early language development. She indicated that there were two specific initiatives currently being implemented to strengthen early literacy and language development. The first involved collaboration with Book Dash and Wordworks to develop 30 “Stories for Joy.” These stories had been developed in the languages spoken by the children to foster a love for reading from an early age. The initiative also focused on supporting practitioners in how they read to children, and how they cultivated an appreciation for stories and reading among young learners. The second initiative related to curriculum implementation support packs developed by the Department to translate the national curriculum framework into practical, play-based daily activities that practitioners could implement in ECD centres. These support packs placed a strong emphasis on language development and pre-literacy skills, while also covering all the broader early learning development areas contained within the National Curriculum Framework. The materials were currently in the final stages of being translated and versioned into all official languages. The first phase of the rollout was expected to commence later in the year.
The Portfolio Committee Chairperson, Ms Joy Maimela, suggested that future oversight engagements with schools should deliberately include an assessment of learners’ reading abilities and literacy outcomes, as this would strengthen the Committee’s monitoring role within the education sector, and stressed that developing an appropriate oversight approach on literacy would be important moving forward. The DBE acknowledged concerns raised and expressed its willingness to strengthen collaboration.