PIRLS & Reading Literacy; with Minister

Meeting report

Minister’s overview

Ms Angie Motshekga, Minister of Basic Education, said that it was a huge privilege to be able to talk about Progress in Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS), as it was an opportunity to speak about the core business of the Department of Basic Education (DBE), which was about learning -- because it spoke to the process of learning. South Africa's participation in PIRLS was an opportunity to benchmark against the best systems in the world. Their participation was not about competition -- they were benchmarking so that the Department learnt from the best systems. There were very few because they were very complex and difficult. In the last PIRLS, only South Africa and Morocco participated from the African continent, and in the current one, only Egypt and South Africa participated.

Unfortunately, sometimes because of the media’s narrative, results are spoken about as part of a regular competition in terms of being number one and two. However, for her as Minister, it was where the Department would go back to ask themselves what they were learning from developed countries. The South African education system was fragile and had a difficult history, but also a difficult context.

From the results, interlinking issues including resources, teachers, parents and the general community, seemed to make the other countries successful. Education is a societal issue and not a Departmental issue, therefore, there should be discussions as a society around the quagmire that the country finds itself in. The country should use the results to build themselves until the next test, where they would benchmark, not compete.

Progress in Reading and Literacy Study

Dr Mark Chetty, Chief Education Specialist, DBE, said that the country participated in the PIRLS to get a robust monitoring framework that had to be complemented by national assessments to further inform the outputs. The study was conducted in 2021 at the heart of the pandemic when there was a lot of uncertainty and disruption to the studies. Prior to the pandemic, there had been notable improvements in the system. They were also participating in the study so that they were able to know their trend and their improvement margins.

He said that the COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted education systems globally, affecting the most vulnerable learners the hardest. Enrolment in the first quarter of 2021 was around 50 000 (0.4%) lower than expected. This problem was concentrated in the lower grades. 54% of contact time was lost in 2020 due to closures and rotations. In the second half of 2021, 22% of contact was time lost due to rotations and regular absenteeism. The PIRLS 2021 study revealed very low performance levels in learners’ ability to read for meaning by the time they turned ten. In generating the data to measure the reading literacy of learners, they also use the early learning national assessment (ELNA), including early and emergent literacy skills and foundational reading comprehension.

He said the country had participated in PIRLS since 2006, with subsequent cycles in2011, 2016, and most recently in, 2021. A total of 12 426 Grade 4 learners in 321 schools, and 9 317 Grade 6 learners in 253 schools had been assessed. The Grade 4 learners that participated represented the 11 official languages and nine provinces, while Grade 6 represented only Afrikaans and English. The results stated that the country’s trend score from 2016 had dropped significantly -- from 320 to 288, and 81% of Grade 4 and 56% of Grade 6 learners did not reach the low benchmark of 400 points. Grade 6 learners scored 384 points, with Afrikaans learners scoring an average of 456. The best performing language was Afrikaans (387), and lowest score was observed in Setswana (211). The Western Cape had the highest scores (363 in Grade 4, and 460 in Grade 6), which was almost 131 points above North West in Grade 4.

Mr Kulula Manona, Chief Director: Foundations for Learning, DBE, said that from the study, the Department had been reviewing its current strategy and that it had become apparent that they needed to improve the teaching and learning of African home languages for reading literacy on a large scale in the emergent and early grade phases -- the early childhood development (ECD) and foundation phase. They were therefore focused on designing a learner-teacher support material (LTSM) package to help children to learn to read, and support the habit and the practice of reading, especially in home languages, during their early years.

The Department was also focused on building community and social capital by leveraging the reading ecosystem, which included non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and state and civil society organisations. The DBE had developed a new integrated reading literacy strategy that was re-evaluated and critiqued internally and externally. In the new strategy, they had shifted the focus from English as First Additional Language, to Home Language, based on international and local evidence. They were also prioritising appropriate African home language materials, including graded readers, decidable texts and alphabet freezes. These would be systematically incorporated into LTSM provisioning

Discussion

Ms N Mashabela (EFF) said that from the presentation, it seemed like the problem of learners who struggled to read was slightly concentrated in townships and rural schools. She asked whether the Department had assessed the difference in resources between the areas that seemed to be doing well and those that did not. She asked whether the problem could be addressed by investing more resources in schools. What practical steps were being taken by the Department to address the lack of attention by educators to learners due to the disproportionate educator-to-learner ratios?

Mr P Moroatshehla (ANC) asked what the history of the performance of South African children in both regional and international tests was. Based on the presentation, two provinces -- Western Cape and Gauteng -- performed better in the 2021 PIRLS study, whilst both Limpopo and the North West were reported to have performed poorly. He wondered what was not happening that needed to happen in the two poorest performing provinces that the Western Cape and Gauteng were doing.

He asked why the National Department was not taking over the home languages instruction pilot programme so that it could further cascade to the other provinces, including Limpopo and the North West, so they could see if there was an improvement.

He asked how far the teacher development programme was being addressed to adapt to the Department’s approach change. He added that it may not be beneficial to fight to improve the learners whilst those who were their teachers or instructors were still lagging behind.

He said that the success of the home language programme hinged on the availability of the programme having enough materials. He asked whether enough materials had been supplied to schools, or whether the DBE had caused the schools to assemble more than enough reading materials. He asked what the budget allocation for provinces since 2019 in the provision of reading materials had been.

Ms S Mokgotho (EFF) asked what had made the Department start investigating the reasons behind the learners who were doing African languages not being competent in reading and writing in those languages, compared to those that were learning and reading in Afrikaans and English. She asked what the timeframe was for the researchers in the DBE to complete this investigation so that the learners who were doing African languages could also read with understanding.

She also asked what the timeline was for promoting educators who could improve reading literacy. What measures has the Department put in place since 2020 to date to speed up the reading with understanding ability of the learners across different languages? What was it going to do differently to improve the reading and understanding ability of the learners? She said Limpopo, the Northern Cape and the North West were predominantly rural, and the schools in Limpopo were overcrowded. Even in the North West, schools were poorly resourced and one of the reasons that made the majority of the learners in those schools not do well was the lack of resources. She asked what the Department intended to do more of in terms of resourcing these schools, so that the learners who were doing African languages would also be able to read with understanding.

She asked if the Department had effectively inculcated amongst parents the need to encourage their children to read with understanding when they were at home.

Mr T Letsie (ANC) welcomed the migration of the ECD to the Department of Basic Education, and the impact of this on addressing the inequality gaps within the education system. He asked whether the Department was considering a proposal to extend the compulsory school leaving age, and if such a change could contribute to reducing the survival rate for grades 10 to 12.

He asked what the trend had been in the performance of regional and international tests of South African children. He asked why South Africa had performed so poorly in the 2021 PIRLS. What had the Department and province done to prevent this from happening? Why was the PIRLS administered when the devastation of COVID-19 was still prevalent within the education system of the participating countries? Were participating countries not given an opportunity to recover, and was the study conducted only thereafter? Did all countries participating conduct the PIRLS during or at the height of COVID-19? What was the Department’s response to people who say that the South African education system is the worst in the world? A news article said the results of the PIRLS 2021 meant that the country's education system failed to prepare the children for what the labour market requires. He asked what the Department response was to this.

Ms A van Zyl (DA) said she was quite taken aback by the Minister's opening statement that South Africa did not apply itself to international tests like these assessments, to be the best. The fact of the matter was that whether South Africa was first or last, only two out of ten children could read at the age of 10, which was very bad, as it was only 20 percent of the children. It was not about being first or last -- it was more about the success of the children, and this was absolutely a failure. When children read for meaning, they can engage with what they are reading, which improves their overall understanding of the text and helps them to retain the information. She asked what steps the Department was taking to improve the reading abilities of children struggling to read for meaning.

She asked how the teachers were being supported and empowered to improve reading instruction in the classroom. Were there any plans to increase the availability of reading materials and resources, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds? What strategies were in place to measure and monitor student progress and literacy skills, and how was this information used to inform teaching and learning practices? Were there any plans to collaborate with other organisations or stakeholders to address the issue of low literacy rates and if so, who were they and what role would they play? She asked how all the strategies and roles placed in front of the Committee be monitored. She proposed that Department needed to look at bringing libraries back to schools, because the municipalities were failing across the country, and relying on municipal libraries would not be adequate for children. She was, therefore, of the opinion that Department needed to look at resourcing libraries at schools.

Mr B Nodada (DA) said that despite what had been said in the meeting, the PIRLS test just measured what the children knew, and the outcome had been devastating. It seemed easy for the DBE to blame anyone or anything else except the Department, and this was quite disappointing because the presentation indicates that the list was quite in-depth concerning children reading for meaning. There was no place in the presentation that the Department had admitted to experiencing challenges, and that those were the reasons why the children had such devastating outcomes and because they had seen their own shortcomings, they were going to institute certain measures.

He said that wholly blaming COVID-19 for the outcome of the PIRLS results was actually quite weak and disappointing, as the Department should be taking some form of accountability for the outcomes. There was a need for accountability. There was a need for honesty in how the Department diagnoses its problems, which meant also taking responsibility. Did the Department have an actual national reading plan, because there was a lack of clarity on whether it was finalised, and documented with specifics of what needed to be achieved? If the reading plan existed, had it been budgeted for by National Treasury, or were provinces simply told to take on their own budgets, which had been continuously cut, for them to come up with their own reading plan, or was there an intention for that reading plan to be budgeted for? In the recent annual performance (APP) plan and budget that was presented to the Committee, he had not seen any money set aside for reading for meaning -- was there a reason for this? Was there an intention to budget for a reading for meaning plan, so that the situation could be turned around? Was it going to be part of the targets in the different provinces so that it was able to measure the impact on the ground? Were they going to wait for another five years of PIRLS studies, or would the Department do continuous systematic and other tests?

Mr Nodada asked if there was a national catch-up plan to turn back the learning losses beyond the reading regression that had been decentralised to provinces for them to be able to implement it, particularly in the rural and township schools that had lost about 50% to 75% of their learning and teaching time in 2020 alone. Was a national catch-up plan budgeted for? Did it form part of their targets? Would the Department consider putting it in as a part of their targets, and how well it would be monitored?

He asked why national benchmarking had not been developed after the last PIRLS. Had there been an indication that the Department would try and improve the performance so that an accurate reading could be achieved? He asked what was included in the ELNA phonics assessment done by the Department a few years back that resulted in a high score not included in the 2022 research that had given a low score for Grade One learners in phonics.

He said the PIRLS report on the Department's website only had highlights. He wanted to know if there had been a delay in releasing report, and if there were intentions to release the full report. When exactly would every Grade One classroom have access to the LTSM minimum package? What exactly was the target of the said plan? He sought clarity on which elements of the LTSM package were provided in print, and what was aimed to be provided in the particular digital issue so that they were able to see whether the plan that the Department had was actually going to be impactful.

He asked when the surveys to track foundational reading skills from Grade One had been done. How many schools actually had access to a library, and was there any particular culture which was inculcated in the children to focus on reading at those particular schools? What was the plan for those that did not have access to some form of library for children to be able to improve their reading?

He asked what percentage of the classes had more than 50 learners in the country. Were there large classes now, or was there an intention to eliminate them? What was the strategy to achieve that?

He asked for better details on the scaling up and layering effective forms of professional support for direct training and coaching, and how many coaches and teachers would be employed. He felt that the core question was whether there was a budget to implement a radical plan. If the plan was not well coordinated, and had specific time frames budgets and was able to measured, the Department would simply be paying lip service, so it was very important for the Department to be able to make a commitment as to what the budget implications would be.

Minister's response

Minister Motshekga said that from all the reports of studies that the Department did or conducted, they showed and confirmed that reading for meaning was a multi-layered issue. It was therefore not simply about getting more money. Most of the issues were not about money. The reports also stated that children who were bullied, harshly punished and malnourished did not perform well, so it was also about learner well-being. It was also about teachers’ confidence, and not only their skills. Society had a responsibility, and the country was lucky that there were lots of village people who had come to the forefront who were reading champions. She stressed that it was everyone’s responsibility.

She said the DBE had not developed and processed African languages adequately for them to become languages of learning. The English language had a selection of words which African languages have not yet developed in the same manner, and that was what the Department must blame itself for. One could not have children attending an ECD programme and being taught in English at home, and going to school to be taught in their mother tongue. There was still a lot of confusion, particularly in African countries, where there was a lot of distortion around languages of learning and perceptions of languages. Most black people had the notion -- she was very sorry to say -- that if one spoke English, then one was very clever. All the apartheid inferiority complexes needed to be confronted to ensure the playing field was levelled.

She said that reading with meaning also meant listening with understanding. Overcrowding in schools was another contributing factor to the problem of reading for meaning, as well as the levels of poverty. The studies helped the Department to assess success stories to learn from those experiences. There was always a correlation between poverty and educational performance. The skill of reading with meaning was also to be able to read and understand things.

She said all the information being sought by Members was contained in the presentation and the various reports published. She therefore requested that they go back to the report, because most of the answers were there. Regarding Gauteng and the Western Cape performing better than the other provinces, she said that when Yousuf Gabru was the Member of the Executive Council (MEC) in the Western Cape, he had developed a reading plan which, fortunately, when Helen Zille became Western Cape MEC for Education, had taken forward. Recently, in a Council of Education Ministers (CEM) meeting, the current MEC for Education was also reporting on their work on evaluation and assessments, so they had not abandoned Yousuf Gabru's plan. She pointed out that those two provinces took time to achieve the results the Committee was seeing today, and added that "education was like growing a tree, not like carrots."

In the Eastern Cape, the Xhosa Home Language pilot programme competed quite well with English and Afrikaans. This was due to the historical richness of the ECD programmes in the province. The ECD centres in the Eastern Cape had been set up by people who faced their daily struggles, and they were seeing the dividends now. As much as the country wanted quick results from her, the systems were important. She was glad that Members were raising issues that were systems based.

In response to Mr Nodada and Ms Van Zyl, she said that part of reading with meaning was listening with understanding and recalling information given. Money was not the answer. The things that the Department was being accused of running away from taking accountability for, were what mattered most. What teachers did and what children did all play a part. At the end of the day, children belonged to families, and it was a joint responsibility. The fact that it took a village to raise a child was fully demonstrated in these results.

Further discussion

Mr B Yabo (ANC) said that during a reading literacy seminar held on 16 May, one of the panel members, Prof L Rutkowski from Indiana University, concluded that comparing parents might not be appropriate for South African children. What was the Department’s response to that? What measures were being put in place in these tests to protect learners from cultural biases? What was the impact of cultural biases on reading literacy, and what was being done to address these cultural biases?

On the issue of impact of the languages of learning and teaching as it pertained to the transition from a specific language to learning a new language for a learner who comes into the system in the lower grades, had there been an investigation on the impact of learners who had been taught in African languages and had learned to write in African languages when they were in their first years, and then being taught in English? Had any learners from other participating countries in this study went through a similar transition? Was there a possibility that such a transition might have impacted the performance of such learners? How was the impact of such a transition to be addressed in future? Was it fair to even compare the performance of such learners who had been going through a similar language transition with those at informal emerging schools who were not home language speakers of Afrikaans and English, and who had been forced by the language of teaching in these schools to write the test in either Afrikaans or English? This was tied in with the questions raised earlier on home language performance.

A comprehensive approach may assist as a correlating element within the context of having the correct output of a learner able to read for meaning. What was the Department beginning to do to ensure it also addressed the national lag identified for boy children up until Grade Nine within the context of the reading for meaning challenge?

He asked what curriculum policy changes had been made to focus on reading literacy, and what the effect of the policy changes was. Were there any policy changes which might be anticipated following the release of the PIRLS 2020 report? If any, what would these be?

Ms M Sukers (ACDP) asked why the DBE had not followed the World Health Organisation (WHO) on masking during COVID-19 at schools. The WHO had not recommended widespread masking of children. She wanted to know the Department's steps to ensure it listened to all inputs and outside research.

What did the Department mean by stating that they would offer continuous support in reading research? Would this be included in their research strategy document? She asked for details of a comprehensive research plan around reading, how much had been budgeted for it, and if impact research was being built into their intervention.

How much budget was the Department allocating to support families and communities to ensure that shocks did not disrupt learning? Learning did not happen only in a classroom. She said the Department and the Committee did not treat NGOs well when they came to present to the Committee. She therefore asked whether the DBE was going to listen to NGOs. She proposed calling for a reading indaba so the Committee could hear from all stakeholders. She asked how much the Department and the provinces had spent on reading over the last five years, and what the impact of the expenditure had been. How had the Western Cape education department found the intervention?

Ms N Adoons (ANC) commended the Department for adopting some of the Committee's recommendations. She applauded the Department that with all the challenges they seemed to be facing on a day-to-day basis, they still found a way of trying to deal with them, as some of the issues being raised by Members were not among the DBE's competencies.

She asked whether the fact that the country had 11 official languages had impacted the outcomes of the PIRLS, as the test was conducted in English. She welcomed the ECD migration to the DBE, and asked what impact the increased resources would have on closing the inequality gaps within the ECD. She also asked what the Department’s medium and long term interventions required to improve the cognitive development of children and improve learner outcomes in the basic education system, recognising that many learners could lack sufficient family support because of the level of education of their guardians and parents. What was the Department implementing to address the gap? What were the key lessons from the PIRLS, and what programme could it implement in the short term to improve learning outcomes?

What programmes could be initiated to introduce mother tongue instruction into the education system? Would government have sufficient resources to support a paradigm shift in developing mother tongue education nationwide?

When reflecting on the results from 2011, 2016 and 2021, the Chairperson asked what the key differences were and whether there had been any progress. What lessons would the Department be able to say they had learnt, particularly on the issue of improvement?

She said the Committee applauded the DBE for being brave and taking part continuously in the PIRLS on behalf of the country, considering there were not a lot of African countries participating. She asked how the initial teacher curriculum prepared teachers to effectively teach and read literacy at a tertiary level. She also asked how many teachers were qualified to teach reading literacy at the foundation and intermediate phases, and of that percentage, how many were struggling to teach and how many were competent.

If learners achieved 63.9 % in the ELNA, in the Department's view, why had they achieved less regarding PIRLS? The 2023 report on the PIRLS indicated that South Africa continued to investigate its PIRLS 2021 results at the time of publication, and would deal with the findings in the national report. She therefore recommended that the outcomes be presented to the Committee if possible, by the end of the current quarter, if time allowed.

DBE's responses

Minister Motshekga said that learning was culturally and society based. The studies raised also revealed that children who grow up where there was no opportunity for adults to engage with the children, did not develop fully. The studies also informed the Department of the seating arrangements in classes. It was not accidental that they were trying to encourage children to sit in circles just to allow them to engage more. They hoped that communities would enrich children’s experiences by engaging them in things that were developmental for children.

In response to Mr Yabo, she said that when they received the PIRLS assessment, they received two other independent reports assessing if PIRLS was relevant. The Department had released the PIRLS results with their own internal study, because local reports were more useful due to the frequency at which they were being asked, but also the cultural context. She reiterated that South Africa's participation in PIRLS was for benchmarking, and not to compete. All the issues raised by Mr Yabo were relevant. If the 2021 PIRLS results had not reflected the impact of COVID-19, she would not have believed the results because the group assessed in 2021 went to school in 2020 and had a full year of study. When COVID-19 hit, they went back to school in September. The next two years, they rotated, and that was reflected in the learning losses.

Dr B Mthembu, DBE, said that in any kind of assessment, principles were attached to it. Culturally, an argument may be made that the PIRLS was not as appropriate as expected, but understanding that they were trying to spread it to a diverse pool of selected learners was important. The problem was that the cultural biases of any assessment would disadvantage other groups of learners where it happened. Any assessment would have limitations, including the context within which the learners find themselves.

He said the language issue needed to be considered carefully. Another issue was the issue of stories and home stories. It was important that the Department start from somewhere when dealing with reading. The limitation of the PIRLS test was that it did not centre itself on the closest and immediate experiences of the learners they were talking about.

On teacher training, he said that the DBE needed to take the presentation comparing the last PIRLS and the current one and all assessments, and then engage with higher education institutions to tell them that they needed to align their teaching to the findings.

On the issue of curriculum and reading, he said that there should be time set aside for reading -- like a period each and every day at school. It was important that there was dedicated time for reading. On the national benchmarking, the Department understood that there was a need for more research.

On measuring the actual impact, he said that they had decided that each and every term, there should be a national standardised measurement of the impact of the learning or reading strategies that the Department was implementing. The DBE should have its own data that actually indicates the patterns of improvement in a standardised manner and also emphasises the comprehension tests. These tests should be developed, and the scores of the comprehension tests would actually be able to help determine whether learners were reading with meaning or not. The challenge of the parents who were illiterate and also did not have adequate levels of education to support learners was known, so in the Department's intervention, they needed to think about how to close the gap between the level of education of the parent and the learner.

Dr Chetty said that a lot of the answers to the questions being raised by the Committee were actually alluded to in the presentation. For those that were not, they appreciated the robust guidance and advice that the Members had offered them. As a learning organisation, he thought it was incumbent that the Department take the advice given forward.

He said there was a robust national assessment framework which had come about after the previous PIRLS. The purpose of the framework was to help the Department deliberately plot, plan and design a series of assessments in which the country would participate locally and on a national scale, or internationally, where the country participates in terms of PIRLS. Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) was also a study about teaching and teaching conditions, for the Department to generate its own research through local, regional or international benchmark studies so that it had the most robust mechanism and did not just rely on outside research.

PIRLS was a Departmental research programme, and it was releasing the PIRLS research and not waiting for other researchers to tell the Department where the problem within the education sector was. Basically, by participating in PIRLS, the Department was opening itself up to scrutiny and criticism which they were happy to take, because it was not the reason why South Africa participated --  the purpose of measurement was to find out where one was. If one wanted to find out the impact of COVID there was no need to participate. Those who had not participated had shied away from actually finding out what the impact was on their systems, using other mechanisms or pretending that there was no problem, whereas the DBE had gone about it in a very deliberate and purposeful way to build their assessment framework to give them the robust and very intimate data.

The Department could do more, and they would take the advice of Members that they needed to do more, and assemble a technical advisory group to look at all the international assessments that it participates in. It had a wealth of data, but making sense of it all was quite an arduous task. They needed to do some kind of audit, and had assembled a team of international and local experts to look at how relevant some of the assessments were, but they could not do so in a reactionary way. The Department needed to look at some very contextual items to level the analysis across the different languages. The PIRLS report was a living document that they had wanted to be as comprehensive as possible before they released it, but within the next few weeks, they would have the big report on PIRLS released, together with other secondary analysis that was more traumatic, where they zone in on a particular area of cultural relevance, looking at the response of Setswane learners' issues of resources in certain provinces. These issues had come up, but it was also within the Department's plans to look at all those analyses so they better informed the system.

He said they needed to be cautious so that they did not just do assessments without putting in interventions. Something to be considered was the COVID interruption. Hence, the Department needed to evaluate whether to continue with the interventions and strategies, or if they should cancel their plans and re-evaluate. This was something that could only be done together as a sector response, and there were already discussions underway about elite reading, together with the MECs, where discussions were at an advanced stage to get the opinions of the public.

The Department had held quite a robust research seminar, and that was how it approached the PIRLS. It had invited speakers and researchers, and they would continue to engage and listen to their advice, as well as NGOs and so forth. However, this had to be done in a measured, firm and collective way so that what the Department did would impact the system.

Mr Stephen Taylor, Economist and Education Researcher, DBE, said the Department had done a lot of research on reading over the last few years. Members could check on the website under programmes of early grade reading studies. They had released many reports there on what would improve reading, as well as the reading benchmarks developed in various African languages, and all the reports could be accessed on the website. The Department had already measured learning losses in 2021 and 2022, so in a sense, the PIRLS results confirmed what they were already monitoring. It was not as if the Department had not reacted earlier to the PIRLS -- they had been aware of the results and had also transparently reported them to the public as long ago as January 2022. They would continue with the new reading plan that had been discussed, and research, monitoring and evaluation would continue.

Dr Rufus Poliah, Chief Director: National Assessment and Public Examinations, DBE, emphasised that all the tests reflected that the Department was improving, and that COVID had clearly contributed to the drop. The Department had declared the years 2022 to 2024 as the years of recovery. Something significant that the Department had been able to do in a short time was to take their Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) and look at what constituted the core in terms of the context. The teachers had been oriented towards and supported in terms of focusing on the core. They think that this was a significant introduction in terms of the catch-up, because they had received a number of reports that the curriculum had been content laden. As a result, teachers were chasing content coverage rather than drilling down deeper. They had amended the assessment programme and given higher weighting to school-based assessments for learning that had now become the key modus operandi in teaching methodology.

The Department had a massive training programme, so that teachers were able to assist learners with learning difficulties continually, and were able to identify where the gaps were and deal with them moving forward. Quite important was the strengthened curriculum that would be implemented from 2025 and there would be a transition from the recovery period into the future.

He said that the Department was moving toward mother-tongue-based bilingual education. The report on the Eastern Cape had been presented to the CEM, and there had been general endorsement that the Department needed to do more in that direction. As a result, it had established a language expert -- a professor who was guiding the Department in terms of the process. He had conducted a rapid assessment with his team on implementing language in education policy across all provinces. There had been data verification, and soon they would review the report. One of the questions that would be answered was the involvement of parents and learners in mother tongue-based bilingual education. The advice coming from the Members was that the Department needed to work with the Eastern Cape, and that was what the Department was doing. They had been monitoring the translation of question papers, and they thought this was something that needed to be followed.

Even though the dropout rate from Grades 10 to 12 seemed to be high, it was an improvement from previous years. This was a positive sign that the Department was improving the output rate in terms of Grades 10 to 12, which they thought had a lot to do with their improved programme of assessment, the trimming of the curriculum and the additional support. He added that, obviously, they were not where they needed to be and would be monitored moving forward.

He said that Prof Rutkowski's comments had been one of the critical lessons coming out of the PIRLS, which dealt with the issue of culture. What the Department was focusing on was the strengthening of the national assessment evaluation of the ELNA results, but to some extent, the Department would bring in some international oversight, so there was the issue of whether they were getting the standard right, even though the assessment was a national one. The positive or systematic evaluation was that they would administer the same assessment every three years. They also had diagnostic tools like the early grade assessment that teachers would administer continuously, so they would be able to know where the learners were progressing in terms of the impact of the learning language transition they were looking at. One of the proposals by another academic expert was that the Department should consider delaying language transitioning to a later point. This still needed to be discussed extensively, as language transitioning was an important point that needed to be looked at in conjunction with mother tongue-based bilingual education.

On the language of PIRLS testing, he said that the learners wrote the test in their home languages and South Africa was the only country of those participating where the written test was written in 11 languages, and that obviously brought its own complications, and could be one of the contributing factors for South Africa not performing as well as expected.

Mr Manona said that the national integrated reading sector plan was currently under review, and predated the release of the PIRLS. There was a gap in recognition of early childhood development and what strategies should be put in place to ensure that they strengthened ECD, particularly early literacy. The strategy that had been developed predated COVID-19 and did not consider the fact that they had a new set of challenges. The review was developed in collaboration and with the involvement of civil societies. The results from such interactions would inform their approach to developing new strategies. On resources, the oversight and monitoring activities had been highlighted and they would heighten them even more to ensure that provinces indeed used the LTSM budgets that were there to ensure that those classrooms became enriched and were going to be able to respond to the challenges.

Book developers had to be able to develop vocabulary in terms of the home languages. Libraries fell within the bracket of LTSM, and there were national guidelines that they had developed to guide provinces in an incremental approach, but what was a non-negotiable was the foundation phase, especially the 'must have' reading items. These needed to be brought inside the classroom to enable learners to be immersed in print, as the proximity between the child and the book would promote access to books and getting those books to be sent to their homes. She said that the oral medium was also important when children were being taught reading literacy, and the oral medium was what was used. It has been used quite powerfully to transform knowledge and culture.

On teacher development, she said policy conversations were going to inform LTSM and the kind of materials that would support the implementation of that policy. What was being talked about in particular was the policy and the science of reading and teaching in the medium of African languages. They had also been consulting widely, so by the end of the year, they could present a plan informed by the strategy. These were the targets, and they were non-negotiable.

Adoption of minutes

The Chairperson read through the minutes of 16 May. Mr Letsie moved for their adoption, and Mr Moroatshehla seconded.  

The meeting was adjourned.