Education in SA | Literacy failure is a "national crisis"

JOHANNESBURG - School-Days CEO Paul Esterhuizen says the reading literacy failure among South Africa's pupils is a national crisis.

It's been recently revealed that 80-percent of Grade four pupils can't read for understanding.

READ: Three-year-old reader stands out amid literacy 'crisis' In SA

Esterhuizen says the solution to turning things around lies in the 2008 foundation for learning, created by former education minister Naledi Pandor.

He said, "summoning it up the 2030 reading panel said we have a generational crisis because how do you catch up if you can't read?"

"How do you continue to learn and study if you can not read and going back to 2008 there’s slight facts that back then the then-educational minister Naledi Pandor: she implemented and gazetted the foundation for learning."

"It was drive around the fact that in the first three years - Grades 1,2 and 3 [the] very foundation of that learning be driven around everyday in school and accountability to have scheduled reading time and it required the delivery of the material across the entire school environment."

"So we often tend to think we leave in the urban areas where we see things being delivered and we go a little bit wider, further and deeper and we realise that there is a non-delivery. That wonderful learning is coming out of the research that the Department of Education have at the tips of their fingers now."

"We still don’t know whether we are playing catch up or will we ever play that catch up. So that generational  catastrophe that is sighted we need to do something. We need to collaborate to deliver the material to pick up on that 2008 foundation for learning strategy and get it in there: let’s get teacher assistance, let's catch up, it’s a national crisis.”