Consider the 19%: What happens to those who can, in fact, read for meaning?

It is important to consider numbers — they are robust and, supposedly, cannot be argued with. But numbers never tell the whole story.

Eighty-one percent of South African Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning, according to the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) results. This is a national crisis that cannot be overstated. 

But what about the 19% who can read for meaning by the fourth grade? What do their journeys entail, and what can they reveal to us?

At Rhodes University, journalism academic Rod Amner surveyed 300 first-year and 50 third-year journalism students about their literacy backgrounds. 

The survey isn’t representative — respondents are mostly female (70%), from the Eastern Cape (60%), and self-selected into a field that attracts readers and writers. But the students’ experiences offer valuable insights precisely because they beat the odds.

According to the 2016 PIRLS data, only 13% of learners in no-fee schools and 24% in low-fee schools reach the reading benchmark. 

Yet, in Amner’s survey, 93% of respondents reported being able to read for meaning by Grade 4, despite 65% attending no-fee schools and a further 17% attending low-fee schools. 

How did they do it?

When I ask Professor Jonathan Jansen about this, he challenges me with a question: “What do you think is the best predictor of a child’s educational success?” I answer that I thought it was building a 10 000-word vocabulary by age six. He laughs. “The World Bank cites the presence of at least one book in a home.”

In Amner’s survey, 80% of students reported access to some reading material in their childhood homes. But “access” is a generous word for what many experienced.

First-year student Nhlanhla Malebye recounts how his earliest reading material was newspapers his family gathered for use as toilet paper. 

He reads by candlelight and remembers being beaten by his father when precious candles were used up faster by his late-night literacy habits. He was also scolded for “wasting” the toilet newspaper when he tore out bits he liked.

When one of Nhlanhla’s teachers learnt his story, the teacher began bringing reading material and purchasing packets of candles. 

This simple yet profound generosity and dedication emerged as one of the major themes in the narratives, with roughly 70% of students citing caring teachers as the main characters in their literacy stories.

But the opposite was also true.

Third-year student Nokukhanya Maseko recalls being humiliated and beaten by a teacher who forced her to read aloud as punishment when she left a book at home in Grade 3. 

The traumatic experience had far-reaching effects, marring her relationship with reading and eroding her confidence so severely that she largely struggles to engage willingly with written text today.

Whether positive or negative, the narratives attest to the inestimable role of teachers in literacy development. 

Students in the survey didn’t just mention teachers — they shared detailed stories about 

specific moments, kindnesses (or cruelties), and specific books that teachers gave them.

Another major factor was the support of family (often grandparents) and community. 

Seventy-three percent of respondents reported that primary caregivers read to them as children, with nearly 50% saying this happened “often” or “always”. Religious texts played an outsized role: 30% cited the Bible or religious books as pivotal to their literacy development.

Access to reading material in classrooms and libraries was also crucial, though uneven.

A full third of students relied on classroom libraries, and 37% on public libraries. But 85% reported that their foundation phase classrooms had no library or a poorly stocked one, with books that were old, damaged or in languages they couldn’t fully understand.

And many students wrote about how difficult it was to learn in a language that wasn’t their own. 

The language barrier affected 25% of respondents, with many recounting how teachers would explain English lessons in isiXhosa — a coping strategy that both helped and hindered.

The power of one book

Grade 4 marks the transition from learning to read to reading to learn.

For many students in the survey, discovering one relatable text kindled their intellectual 

fires. For Nhlanhla, it happened when his English teacher gave him My Children! My Africa! by Athol Fugard. 

When we meet under the trees outside Rhodes Library, his face lights up as he remembers relating to the character Thami Mbikwana — an intelligent young Black man who could envision a better world.

For Nokukhanya Maseko, it was a text on Pan-Africanism assigned in undergraduate politics courses that challenged her trauma-induced reading reticence and woke up a dormant desire to read and engage beyond what was prescribed.

Both stories highlight a crucial issue: representation in reading matter. For students who never encountered a relatable text, reading for pleasure often didn’t happen. But those who discovered a text they identified with often became avid readers.

Several students, including Kelly Dube and Iviwe Gwazilitye, found reading to be a “safe place” after the loss of their parents. Others, including Nhlanhla Malebye, wrote about reading as an escape from the relentless daily realities of domestic violence, poverty and other hardships.

Others found reading through unexpected channels. When physical books weren’t available, many turned to social media and apps like Wattpad, where they could access free stories. 

This generation rewrote the rules of what “real” reading looks like.

The crisis that persists

By high school and university, students should have progressed beyond reading to learn and have developed a habit of reading for pleasure and growth. Reading for pleasure is widely acknowledged as the primary basis of lifelong learning.

But many in the survey do not engage in it.

One of the most startling findings is that 50% of respondents now read fewer than one book per month for pleasure. Many commented that the volume of required reading at university had killed their love of reading.

Jansen apportions substantial blame for this to the education system itself. 

Teaching undertaken primarily for assessment kills the love of learning by creating competition, stress and a focus on box-ticking, he argues. 

He believes teachers at every level should introduce students to different literatures, tell them stories, and work hard to connect with them through written texts — both 

the texts given to students and the writing done by the students.

He believes that one of the most detrimental things about a lack of reading is that it leads to a lack of writing — and that writing is one of the most powerful tools in a person’s intellectual arsenal. 

Every teacher is primarily a language teacher, he insists. Teachers in all disciplines should prioritise connecting students with the language and canon of their respective fields.

He longs to see the leaders of our country modelling a love for reading through a campaign led by the president. 

Reading for pleasure should be engaged from the top down to change the country’s reading culture.

The 81% of Grade 4s who cannot read for meaning remains our most urgent literacy concern. The stories of the 19% show us that reading for meaning is possible — even in dire circumstances.

When I think about Nhlanhla reading toilet paper by candlelight, I see triumph — a child’s hunger for words overcoming impossible circumstances. 

I also think about all the children who didn’t have a teacher bring them candles, who didn’t stumble upon one book that spoke to them, who were shamed instead of encouraged.

Sadly, this exercise of interrogating the literacy journeys of Rhodes journalism students also makes another thing clear: being part of the 19% who can read for meaning by Grade 4 is no guarantee of progressing to voluntary and fulfilling reading and writing habits later in life.

This feature was made possible by the Henry Nxumalo Foundation which funded the Between the Lines series.