By Daanyaal Matthews
The literacy levels of South Africa’s youth have been under question since the release of the 2021 PIRLS report, which indicated that roughly 81% of Grade 4 could not read with comprehension in any of the eleven official languages of the Republic. Earlier this month, Minister of Education Siviwe Gwarube attended the Kievet Reading Panel in Johannesburg, during which she highlighted the disparities within the education system and the need for reforms.
Speaking on VOC Breakfast, Noncedo Madubedube, Equal Education General Secretary and member of the Reading Panel, argueed government intervention is desperately needed to curtail this issue, especially in non-English languages, through the training of educators, stating:
“We’ve learned that in the training of the Bachelor of Education, at the moment, only 2% of your timing study is dedicated to teaching teachers how to teach reading. Now that’s a dissonance. If we understand the other in crisis and the interventions at the cold face, and the most important intervention is led by teachers and the teaching force, then surely at a training level we should have much more time dedicated to teaching teachers how to teach reading.”
While the training of educators to curtail the issue is necessary it would subsequently require further monetary investment in training. This could pose a hurdle to the Education Department as the sector has been fraught with monetary issues related to national government cutting public expenditure, with the WCED reporting that it had an R870 million deficit for the 2024/2025 financial year, resulting in the thousands of contract posts being lost. For Madubedube, these budget cuts, which are a feature of austerity policies, need to be reevaluated.
“They are radical, big, big budget cuts to the education budget. And those budget cuts were being implemented as part of the austerity budgeting agenda. One of the first line items to be frozen are teaching posts and posts of officials inside the education system. So, there’s something there that’s not going to help us with the replenishment. Regardless of what universities can do, and so we need a full sector response to this crisis.”
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