Sameera Casmod | sameerac@radioislam.co.za
24 April 2024 | 12:16 p.m. SAST
2-minute read

Image: Adobe Stock

As the global community celebrated World Book Day on 23 April 2024, attention turned to South Africa’s literacy crisis, where 81% of Grade 4 learners are unable to read for meaning in any language.  While efforts are being made to ensure access to quality reading materials and education, there is a need for legislative reform in the education sector.

Fatima Laher, a candidate attorney at Section27 and advocate for educational equity, told Radio Islam International that the disparity in literacy rates in South Africa compared to international proficiency can be attributed to ineffective spending and under-resourced schools.

“And this comes due to government’s… ineffective spending towards literacy. Children either don’t have enough books or the books that they do have access to, they’re unable to read these,” Laher explains.

The inability to read for meaning persists across all languages.

There is a continuing divide between well-equipped schools, which predominantly served white learners during apartheid, and ill-equipped schools that accommodated black learners, Laher notes.

Government expenditure in basic education amounted to over R5 billion in recent years. The problem, then, is not a lack of funds, but ineffective use of available funds, Laher notes.

“In 2022 and 2023, government’s expenditure equated to 5.12 billion rands for basic education. So we’re just asking that government use the spending effectively to ensure that these binding standards and regulations are put in place to ensure that there’s better teaching time, there’s quality in the teaching, there’s quality in learner and teaching materials. And this would just ensure that learners can actually read for meaning by the age of 10,” Laher says.

The Makhanda High Court ruling in 2022, which highlighted the Department of Basic Education’s failure to provide essential reading materials to thousands of schools in the Eastern Cape, compels the government to address the high illiteracy rates in the country.

Laher cautions that sustained efforts and monitoring are necessary to ensure long-term sustainability.

Implementing binding standards and regulations to ensure effective spending and accountability in the education sector is necessary. In addition, it is important to re-evaluate existing guidelines to establish new standards.

“These guidelines [need to] be re-looked at and new guidelines [need to] be drawn up to ensure that there is a recommended reading material, that there is a recommended minimum time required for reading, and that these shortages of quality reading materials in classrooms are addressed,” Laher says.

Listen to the full interview on Sabaahul Muslim with Moulana Sulaimaan Ravat here.