Efforts to strengthen literacy and numeracy at South African schools received a major boost when the embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Pretoria donated more than R69-million for a research programme spanning 2007 to 2011.
The money is part of the R1,3-billion the embassy has committed to promoting education in the country.
The inability to read and write has been identified as one of the major causes of the poor academic performance of learners across the country. There have been reports of cases where learners in higher grades still battle to read and write.
Lebogang Molai, the embassy’s education programmes officer, said their generous contribution was informed by the understanding that literacy and numeracy form the basis of any learning. “Research has shown that children who learn how to read and write at an early stage cope well and perform better academically,” said Molai. She said this is also a response to the call by Education Minister Naledi Pandor to promote mother-tongue learning at schools.
“We wanted to see what the situation looks like on the ground so that appropriate measures and interventions could be explored,” said Molai. She said traditionally their funding was targeted at basic education such as early childhood development and adult basic education and training, but they had to change tack to accommodate the department of education’s request for funding in primary education.
The research programme will be conducted by a coalition of professional and reputable service providers under the leadership of the Human Sciences Research Council.
These include the Joint Education Trust, the Education Policy Consortium and Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa. The programme will cover four categories and these are: knowledge advancement, strategic research capacity, institutional support and community support.
Molai said the service providers would compile a report that they would send to the department for implementation. And hopefully this would “bring about possible policy change as well as induce dialogue” that would enhance the quality of the entire education system for the benefit of all learners.
She said learners will be the ultimate beneficiaries, as the findings will be implemented at their schools.