South Africa sinks to the bottom of the class
The government blames Covid for South Africa’s collapse to the bottom of the global rankings in reading. It’s belatedly trying to orchestrate a catch-up strategy by dusting off a reading plan that is more than a decade old
25 May 2023 - 05:00
Angie Motshekga says she has a plan. After the latest international reading rankings showed South Africa has lost a decade of progress to become the world’s worst performer, the basic education minister has announced a strategy to improve pupils’ literacy. It sounds good on paper — except we’ve heard it all before.
Motshekga sketched out her four-point plan last week, on the day the latest Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) results were published. They show that 81% of South Africa’s grade 4 pupils cannot read for meaning in any language, up from 78% in 2016. ..
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