South Africa's reading crisis: 5 steps to address children's literacy struggles

By Catherine Kell, Associate Professor (Language and Literacy in Education), University of Cape Town
Carolyn McKinney, Professor in Language Education, member bua-lit collective, University of Cape Town
Robyn Tyler, Senior Researcher, University of the Western Cape
Xolisa Guzula, Lecturer, Applied Language and Literacy Studies, University of Cape Town

Kunyashe is a Grade 1 pupil in Cape Town, South Africa. She’s very focused on her schoolwork. She shares a tiny one-roomed shack, hardly bigger than a double bed, with her mother and four siblings. Kunyashe receives a meal at school – her teacher once saw the little girl spooning some of this meal into another container to take home for her baby brother.

This is the context in which many South African children learn to read. But it’s a context that received no mention when the country’s Department of Basic Education, on 16 May, released the alarming preliminary findings of the

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