SA children say they really like to read, despite dismal reading test results
Grade 3 is an interesting time to test children for reading ability in South Africa. Children are taught in one of the 11 official languages (ostensibly their home language) in their first years of school, known as the foundation phase, from Grade R to Grade 3.
From Grade 4, the 'language of learning and teaching', or language of instruction, becomes predominantly English or Afrikaans, although there are moves to change this and extend home-language instruction.
Research shows that there are benefits in teaching young children foundational reading skills in their home language, even if the results of the latest surveys don't appear to hold that up.
In the past five years, two surveys have found that our Grade 3s and Grade 4s can't read for meaning. The first, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA's) 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) tested Grade 4s and involved children in 57 countries.
The second, a local survey called the South African Systemic Evaluation (SASE), involved 56,650 learners from 1,688 schools. It looked at the reading and mathematics abilities of Grade 3, 6 and 9 learners across the country.
The Department of Basic Education released the results of the SASE only in December 2024.
In both surveys, the children who were tested in Afrikaans and English scored higher than the children who wrote the test in the other nine languages. In Pirls, English and Afrikaans were the only two languages where the average scores were relatively close to 400, the minimum required to show an ability to read for meaning in easy texts.
In the SASE, the reading skills and knowledge learners are expected to be proficient at are divided into four performance levels. The first level, named 'emerging', is where learners are just beginning to develop the skills required for grade 3-level reading. The next level up, known as 'evolving', is where learners are beginning to construct and adapt what they have learnt. The third level, called 'enhancing', is where learners demonstrate that they actually have the required skills, are able to apply those skills and show they are moving towards independent learning. At the highest, 'extending' level, learners show an advanced understanding of the knowledge and skills required, apply their knowledge in creative ways and can learn independently.
Learners need to have 'enhancing'-level skills to meet the requirements of Grade 3. Only one in five of the Grade 3s who took part achieved that level.
Mother tongue
Seventy-five percent of the Grade 3s in South Africa's public schools are taught in their home language, according to the Department of Basic Education.
Professor Abdeljalil Akkari, an expert in education at the University of Geneva, argues that 'pre-primary is the educational sector which has the greatest need to be based on local pedagogy, traditions and cultures'.
South Africa was one of the few countries that ran the Pirls test in multiple languages. While in theory, students testing in their home language rather than only English should equalise the assessment playing field, results showed that this was not in fact the case.
Researchers have pointed out some testing issues with Pirls, such as how translating a European test into African languages may create more issues than it solves. An example given by researchers at the University of Pretoria is how the isiZulu version of the Pirls test needed to use foreign words in translations such as 'i-Hammerhead shark'.
They show that due to translations, the isiZulu and English texts used in Pirls aren't equivalent, resulting in a harder test for the isiZulu schools compared with the English schools.
Language of instruction
If you look in more detail at the data on the language of instruction at schools, about a third of South Africa's Grade 3s are actually taught in English, even though English is the home language of fewer than 10% of them.
Not surprisingly, 98% of the Grade 3s whose home language is English are taught in English at school; 92% of Afrikaans-speaking children are taught in Afrikaans.
The picture is different for African language speakers. Children whose home language is isiNdebele are the least likely to be taught in their home language at 50%, according to DBE data.
Sesotho speakers fare marginally better at 52%. More than 70% of the children who speak isiXhosa, Siswati, Setswana, Sepedi and Tshivenda were taught in their home language, as were two-thirds of children who speak Xitsonga and isiZulu.
Provincial differences
Provincial reading scores from the SASE showed that in the Western Cape, close to half the Grade 3s could read up to the required standard. In Gauteng, that dropped to 28% and in all the other provinces, fewer than 20% of the learners had Grade 3-level reading skills.
Six languages are of particular concern because more than 40% of Grade 3 learners managed to achieve only the most basic performance level in their reading skills in the reading assessments. They are Sepedi, Setswana, Sesotho, isiNdebele, Tshivenda and Xitsonga.
Those languages are predominantly spoken in the four provinces that scored the lowest in the SASE reading assessment: the Northern Cape, Mpumalanga, North West and Limpopo, according to Nwabisa Makaluza, a researcher at Stellenbosch University, who contributed an advisory note for the Reading Panel 2025 Background Report.
In these provinces, a high percentage of Grade 3 learners are taught in their home language. For example, 87% in the Northern Cape, 72% in Mpumalanga, 79% in North West and 92% in Limpopo.
In comparison, in Gauteng, only two in every five learners (43%) are taught in their home language.
Gauteng is the most linguistically diverse province. No home language is truly dominant. The most commonly spoken language is isiZulu, but only one in four Grade 3s speak isiZulu at home. More than 20,000 Grade 3 learners speak Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi and English at home, more than 10,000 speak Xitsonga, Afrikaans and isiXhosa.
This diversity makes teaching in all the home languages a complicated affair, requiring teachers trained to teach foundation phase learners in multiple languages. Despite its linguistic diversity, and the relatively low proportion of learners taught in their home language, Gauteng's Grade 3 learners did better in SASE reading tests than all but those in the Western Cape.
The standard of education, quality of teaching and availability of resources in the public schools may also play a part in the poor reading assessment results of children.
Not enough African language teachers
South Africa's universities are not producing enough teachers to meet the demand for foundation phase teachers who can teach in African languages, according to a Department of Basic Education report by education economist Martin Gustafsson.
The most recently available data, which was for 2018, shows the languages with the biggest undersupply of teachers are Sepedi, isiXhosa and Setswana.
Only three languages are producing enough teachers for the foundation phase: Tshivenda, Siswati and isiNdebele.
'Some African languages are producing as little as 20% of the required number of language of learning and teaching-specific teachers,' according to the report.
The language in which children are taught to read is just one factor. There are historical factors, such as the channelling of resources during apartheid to white schools where English and Afrikaans were the languages of instruction. Thirty years later, many of those schools remain better resourced.
Access to learning material
'Children learn better and are more likely to pursue their subsequent studies when they have begun their schooling in a language that they use and understand,' says Professor Abdeljalil Akkari.
South Africa's education policy states that the language of learning and teaching must be the learner's 'home language', but it is the school that chooses which language is to be regarded as the home language for their learners, so in many cases the official home language is not actually their mother tongue, says Sinethemba Mthimkhulu and other Pretoria University researchers.
In addition, educational resources are primarily designed for English-speaking learners. The actual language profile of the country is not at all reflected in textbook publications. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, many countries have incorporated digital learning into their schooling.
The 2024 SA Book Publishing Survey shows that 1,130 new digital textbooks were published in English, more than 600 in Afrikaans and fewer than 300 were published in all the other South African languages combined.
More worrying is the lack of new print textbooks being published in Sepedi, Setswana, SiSwati, Sesotho, isiNdebele, Xitsonga and Tshivenda. It's not only textbooks, other reading materials also show an English and Afrikaans dominance in a country where two in five people speak isiZulu and isiXhosa.
The National Reading Baromete r, through the National Reading Survey, found that access to books in home languages is still a huge problem in South Africa.
The survey found that 72% of parents who read with their young children would prefer to read in an African language.
It also found that schools are the most important source of reading materials in South African households. In many cases (40%), the books that adults read with their children at home are school textbooks and 33% are fiction books.
Looking at all books in general, fewer than 10% of book sales are for African language books, according to data from the latest South African Book Publishing Industry Survey.
In the period from 2021-2024, fewer than 1% of book sales in South Africa were isiNdebele or siSwati books, and Sepedi and Sesotho publications each accounted for only 1%. isiZulu publications account for just 3% of these book sales and, although English is the home language of fewer than 10% of the population, English books made up 80% of the total book revenue, the book publishing industry survey shows.
Two out of three households (63%) do not have any fiction or nonfiction books at all (this excludes bibles, magazines, textbooks etc). Most speakers of Xitsonga, isiNdebele and Tshivenda don't have a single book in their language at home, and more than 40% of Setswana and Sesotho speakers don't have any books in theirs, according to the 2023 National Reading Survey findings.
Let the children read
Despite the immense problems with reading, inequality and lack of resources, these reading surveys also reveal a shining light of hope, which is that South Africa's children actually like reading.
Along with the Pirls reading test were various surveys, for the parents, school teachers and principals, as well as the children themselves. In the children's questionnaire, one of the questions asked whether they enjoyed reading. More than 70% of South Africa's children enthusiastically said they enjoyed reading, the 11th highest percentage of the 57 countries participating in the survey.
In an 'enjoyment of reading' index, which encompassed a range of questions, Pirls found that 90% of the South African children like reading to some extent, and 50% of those like reading 'very much'. DM
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Annual Performance Plan He added that the Annual Performance Plan reflected the challenging decisions around resource allocation and prioritisation within the basic education sector, especially given budget constraints after years of austerity. Vangqa noted that successfully implementing Coding and Robotics required substantial resources, such as well-trained teachers, adequate learning materials, and reliable IT equipment. Given the current fiscal limitations, the sector must prioritise efforts to improve literacy and numeracy skills, which were the top priorities of the seventh administration. This focus was essential due to South Africa's low literacy and numeracy rates, which hindered learners' ability to engage with and excel in gateway subjects like Mathematics, Science, Technology, Accounting, Economics, and Coding and Robotics. South Africa continues to face a severe literacy and numeracy crisis, particularly in the foundational early grades. Recent studies reveal that about 81% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning in any language, highlighting a critical gap in basic literacy skills essential for further learning. Numeracy skills are similarly weak, with South Africa ranking among the lowest performers in mathematics on international assessments such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, despite some progress over the past two decades. Education expert Professor Mary Metcalfe has stressed that tackling South Africa's literacy crisis from the early years is essential to strengthening the entire education system. She said addressing the country's literacy challenge from the foundation phase was fundamental to improving quality and efficiency across the system. The data available on foundational literacy showed not only that children were not reaching the levels of reading performance required by the curriculum for success in primary school, but also that persistent inequalities in the conditions under which children learned to read continued to entrench disparities in reading achievement and shape unequal learning pathways and life opportunities. Metcalfe said she supported the department's current approach of focusing on foundational literacy and numeracy in grades R to 3, and not further crowding the curriculum with Coding and Robotics. 'If we're going to address the massive national crisis of so many learners not being able to meet the minimum requirements of using reading for learning in Grade 4 — which has been shown in the department's systemic evaluation — we need to make sure that resources and teaching and learning time are focused on improving literacy and numeracy,' she said. Stalled by shortfalls The large-scale implementation of Coding and Robotics has been repeatedly delayed. These delays stem primarily from the scaling back or postponement of initially ambitious rollout plans, persistent infrastructural deficits in many schools (such as lack of computer labs and reliable internet), and the ongoing need for comprehensive teacher professional development to equip educators with the necessary skills to teach Coding and Robotics effectively. 'Literacy and digital skills must go hand in hand' Education activist Hendrick Makaneta has raised concerns about the delay in fully implementing Coding and Robotics as a mandatory subject in schools, due to the importance of preparing learners for the demands of the digital era. 'While foundational literacy and numeracy are crucial, our learners also need skills for the digital age so that they can be equipped with skills required by the new world of work,' he said. Makaneta added that a phased approach could work, but would need a clear timeline and plan for implementation. 'The department should prioritise building capacity and resources to support Coding and Robotics, ensuring all learners have access to these essential skills. Obviously most of the existing jobs will become obsolete,' he said. Equal Education Law Centre Attorney Ebrahiem Daniels acknowledged the importance of foundational skills while also cautioning against neglecting digital readiness in the curriculum. 'While we are not curriculum experts, we believe the department's prioritisation of foundational literacy and numeracy is critical in a context where 80% of Grade 4 learners in South Africa cannot read for meaning. These foundational skills are non-negotiable building blocks,' he said. Daniels said the department's decision highlighted fundamental tensions in the system as technology was advancing at an unprecedented pace, and there was a risk of creating a generation that was left behind in an increasingly digital world. 'Our view is that the challenge is not choosing between foundational skills and digital competency, but rather how we integrate both without compromising either. It is unfortunate that different aspects of our education system have to compete for limited resources, particularly because learners cannot afford for us to solve their challenges sequentially when the world demands we address them concurrently,' he said. DM
