Education and for Children in Rural South Africa

Eight out of 10 children in South African can't read at the same level as their international peers, not in English, not in their home language, not in any language! According to The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), an international comparative reading assessment: 87% of isiZulu grade 4 learners in South Africa cannot read for meaning.

On the ground, our facilitators see this daily, and it's what sparked them years ago to suggest an additional programme to help children with the technical skills of reading. Through our storybook-based curriculums which focus on ‘making stories come alive’ through identifying with characters, and our Mobile Library, most children have been developing a real love of reading and a curiosity for learning. Still, without a solid foundation in the technical skills required to know how to read, they struggle to access stories and information fully. This also makes it harder to build self-esteem and to maintain an interest in learning over time.  

When children started going back to school only a few days a week again this year, we saw an opportunity of time (the days they were not in school) to develop and assist with a Literacy Programme. The only problem was… we are not school teachers or literacy experts! Nevertheless, we set down this path and were committed to finding how we could assist within our somewhat limited capacity. What we knew is that we could arrive at each neighbourhood cluster two and a half hours before our Thandukwazi Outdoor Programme started after school and we could work with the children in grade R- three who were not attending school that day. With just three to eight children in each group, we knew this one-on-one time could be incredibly valuable for the children, whose school classes often have over 50 children in each one. 

So back to the question of what could we do? We started by consulting with some experts and confirmed the incredible value of learning to read in one’s home language, especially since isiZulu is phonetic and English is not. We then looked closely at the CAPS curriculum for grade R to three and determined that we would focus on the Emergent Reading goals, as most of the Speaking and Listening goals were already being met in our after-school curriculums, and Emergent Writing was a focus in the school classrooms. After completing an audit of literacy tools commercially available, we were shocked at the lack of learn-to-read resources in isiZulu! So we worked with our partners to discover a few resources they had developed themselves, such as Wordwork's Little Stars programme that had been translated to isiZulu recently, some of the Keys to Learning cards, and Siyakwazi's Red Flag catch-up tools in isiZulu, which were resources we had the capacity to implement. 

The rest? Our staff got creative and made their own games, puzzles, and resources from cardboard, glue, and paper…

So far, Siyakwazi's sound boxes are the biggest hit. Nellie, the Programme Manager for the Literacy Programme, explains that these ice cream container boxes contain picture cards and small objects that help children understand the shape of the letter, the sound of the letter, words containing the letter and objects, actions, or animal names that start with the letter, allowing for a multitude of fun games. 

The children seem to be enjoying the programme so far, but it hasn't come without its challenges. Besides needing to learn more about the technical aspect of learning to read and needing to make most of our own resources, we developed an assessment to determine which grade level each child is currently reading at in terms of technical reading skills, but it has taken a long time to assess and sort the information so that it can be as helpful as possible. The following shows the results that have already been captured:

The good news is that our Early Childhood Development programme seems to make a difference. We also conducted the Siyakwazi Red Flag Assessment (graph in images) which measures a variety of school- readiness skills with each child and found that 13% of children in Grade R this year are at risk of falling behind.

The other good news is that we're already starting to see some changes. As Mimi our Thandukwazi Outdoor and Literacy Programme Facilitator, told us, "The child that I saw improve since we started the programme is Nqubeko. He used to have very small handwriting, and he was shy about his writing. He would also get left behind when we did activities. But, through this programme, I've seen him develop. Even his handwriting has changed. He's participating more, and he's active during the activities. He's more confident, enthusiastic; his self-esteem has grown. He's willing to learn too. There's a big difference. Today we were reading The Gruffalo in isiZulu, after I finished, he even asked to read it again for the children".

Our goal is to get every child reading at their grade level. If we can do this in isiZulu while slowly incorporating English from Grade two, then they will be better equipped to make the learning language switch in Grade four, where all textbooks and assessments are conducted in English. 

We look forward to seeing if there is any impact from the Literacy Programme as we aim for: Children who have the technical skills to read confidently, enabling them to become the curious, life-long learners that they are aspiring to be.

Of course one intervention once a week is unlikely to make major shifts needed, so we are also looking at how we can integrate new lessons learned into our Early Childhood Development, Learning at Home, and Home Visiting Programmes, so that technical literacy skills are developed early and reinforced in an ongoing (and fun!) manner.

Thank you for following us on this journey through a pandemic and the circumstances of children without days of schooling!

So much has changed since we sent our last report in November 2020! At that time our Neighbourhood ECD clusters were in full swing and there was an air of excitement about Christmas, the new year and things getting back to (somewhat) normal. We reopened the doors of our community centre for a short time on 7th December and had 150 children attending our Siyazazi programme for children from Gr 4-7. It was so wonderful to have children in the skate park and community centre again. But sadly throughout the month, the rate of infection in our community climbed significantly and it became unsafe to conduct our programmes for children (including our Neighbourhood ECD). We, therefore, had to revert to our Learning at Home programme for the time being.

But our Neighbourhood ECD programme was still open for most of December and facilitators got to spend a little bit more time reading wonderful books and doing fun activities with children before they had to pack everything back up.

One of the books we explored with the children was a real hit with everyone during that time.
Lara the Yellow Ladybird by Catherine Holtzhausen, Martha Evans and Nadene Kriel is about Lara, a ladybird who learns about uniqueness and self-acceptance. Lara’s wings are yellow rather than red and when she tries to blend in and make them the same as everyone else, she learns that being unique is a wonderful and important thing. This book was very popular with children in both Neighbourhood ECD clusters and our Thandukwazi Outdoor programme for children from Gr R-3. Children in Neighbourhood ECD clusters got to read Lara twice. The first time they read through the story and discussed the plot. Later in the week, they read the book again and did some activities relating to the theme, like searching for different kinds of insects on a Discovery Walk and painting a ladybird of their very own on a paper plate.

Zooming out, we are delighted to share that, even though we did not run our normal programming in 2020 due Covid-19, our modified programming (which included Learning at Home and Neighbourhood ECD clusters) appears to have had a notable positive impact on children’s development. To evaluate the relative success of groups that were comprised of children from our Imbewu ECD and Ndunge ECD programmes, we conducted a series of assessments with children throughout the year. The areas of assessment for 2020 were Language and Literacy, Numeracy, Empathy and Creativity and we’ll be sharing more of this data in our annual Impact Report which will be published within the next few months.

We are excited to report that, from 23rd March 2021, we will again be transitioning from Learning @ Home to Neighbourhood ECDs and we are absolutely thrilled to be able to offer in-person learning again!

We are optimistic that Early Learning will reach new heights in 2021 and thank you for joining us on the journey!