Jacquie Golding-Duffy
The conventional belief among commercial radio stations that education programmes lose rather than gain listeners has been challenged by the popularity of educational programmes on community radio stations.
Siven Maslamoney, director of Ulwazi educational radio project, a non-profit, pilot educational radio project for adults, says it is “encouraging to see that the commitment by commercial radio stations to fulfil their mandate of broadcasting educational programmes has attracted listeners who would normally be devoted to the SABC radio stations”.
Maslamoney says the research conducted by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (Case) revealed that 87% of listeners had heard of Alex FM and listened to the station’s educational programme called Dark City. Beyond that, Maslamoney says, 94% of listeners say they learned from the educational programmes, while 59% of listeners from informal dwellings such as hostels and displaced people’s centres, said that what they heard on the educational programme was new to them.
Forty-five percent of listeners from backyard shacks said they learned something new and 44% from formal dwellings, which include tenants and low-cost housing owners, said the same.
For millions of South Africans, radio is the the main medium of communication, but is largely under-utilised as the medium for mass education, he said.
The Ulwazi Educational Radio Project, established in 1994 as a pilot project, aims to use radio in a bid to provide adults with effective basic education. The project set out to train educational radio producers in partnership with the BBC, to produce models of radio programmes in a range of languages in conjunction with the adult basic education and training organisations and to continually evaluate its work in order to increase the knowledge and use of educational radio.
The project developed a three-phase broadcasting strategy in which it planned various models of radio programmes. The first phase completed and evaluated by Case showed that Ulwazi programmes have broad appeal and are perceived as lively and interesting by listeners; a positive departure from educational programmes seen as boring.
The research revealed that listeners often discussed things which they had heard on the radio to disseminate useful information and to develop debate issues.
Participants in the focus groups saw radio as a medium which delivers more informative programmes than television and newspapers and therefore preferred it.
Radio is by far the most listened to medium of the three mainstream media and the Ulwazi educational project aims to use radio more effectively to reach and inform people.
The Ulwazi Radio Project completed its models in Natal via Radio Maritzburg, broadcasting in Zulu and English, in the Eastern Cape via Radio Transkei broadcasting in Xhosa and in Gauteng on Radio Alex FM broadcasting in English.