SA comes bottom of the class in literacy

Earlier this month, SA's representatives joined 300 other delegates at a World Literacy Summit in the UK where they signed the "Oxford Declaration" that seeks a recommitment to education going beyond the United Nations Millennium Development goal of universal access to schooling by 2015.

The CEO of the Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy, Masennya Dikotla, who attended the summit, says the global focus should be on pupil performance and how educational resources, the abilities of teachers, and matters such as home-language tuition contribute to pupil performance.

A trend had emerged in SA and abroad whereby more children were attending schools. Despite this, "they are not learning", Dikotla says in motivating for the new global focus.

On track

In terms of the Millennium Development Goals, and the focus on schooling outcomes, however, SA is on track.

The government's commitment to education has seen access of seven to 14-year-olds to primary schooling rise to almost 100%, and the government has committed what will amount to more than R5bn to the South African Literacy Programme, which aims for basic literacy for 4,7-million adults.

Despite this, last year's Annual National Assessments saw 69% of grade 3 pupils not achieve, or only partially achieve, the required level of literacy for that grade. In addition, SA performed at or near the bottom of virtually every global and regional ranking of literacy in which it participated. In light of these figures, the Department of Basic Education has expressed its intention of moving to an outputs-based rather than inputs-based approach to education.

(Image: GCIS)

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said in her department's 2012-13 Annual Performance Plan, released last month, that the period would be characterised by interventions with "clear goals, signposts and milestones to measure progress in basic education". However, Dikotla says while SA seems to be adopting the correct policies, in the wake of performance the conclusion has to be drawn that "it is not yet there in implementation".

This "follow through" is important for SA, which, while facing the same problems in illiteracy as developing countries, was in fact a middle-income country, and would have to deal with the problem "with our own resources", Dikotla says.

Avoid playing the 'blame game'

The CEO of Pearson Southern Africa, Fathima Dada, says a core focus of the summit had been the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) interacting with governments in the literacy sector. Pearson, one of the world's largest providers of educational resources, sponsored the summit.

Dikotla says this aspect of the summit - the role of civil society - showed that successful countries had avoided playing "the blame game" when it came to outcomes.

More "cohesion" is needed between South African NGOs, which were overly competitive, including NGOs that engaged in "constructive criticism" of the government, he says.

A secondary focus of the summit was in refocusing illiteracy as a "disease", given its socio- economic effects.

This focus was due to illiteracy's direct links with an array of poor life outcomes, such as poverty, unemployment, social exclusion, crime and chronic illnesses, says the CEO of the World Literacy Trust, Andrew Kay, who convened the summit.

SA contributes US$6,6bn of the US$1.19tn annual cost of illiteracy to the global economy, according to a World Literacy Foundation report.

Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge