The cheering and ululation from the Tsolo Community Hall in the Eastern Cape echoed across the village as hundreds of learners lined up to receive certificates from the regional coordinator, Lindiwe Bara.
It was July, and thousands of similar ceremonies were held across the country. The learners were not matriculants or graduates.
They were adults aged between 18 and 80, some of them blind, deaf or physically disabled, who completed the Kha Ri Gude literacy and numeracy campaign in 2008 or 2009. All in all, there were about 800 000 of them.
On receiving their grade three certificates, they stepped over the illiteracy threshold into a world that is immeasurably richer in meaning, in which they can act and transact as never before.
The Kha Ri Gude campaign is the government’s attempt to meet the Education for All (EFA) goal of halving adult illiteracy by 2015 — in other words, teaching 4.7-million adults to read in one of the 11 official languages and do basic arithmetic. The campaign had an 80% completion rate in 2008, which rose to 89% in 2009.
In both years, close on 80% of those who wrote their learning assessments passed. International and national statistics show that the 2009 learner completion or survival rate of 89% is extremely high for a campaign of this nature. On June 28 the South African Qualifications Authority (Saqa) delivered its verification of learner assessments — one of the necessary checks aimed at ensuring the integrity of the campaign and its processes.
During March, Saqa drew a sample of assessments and, using a team of 210 moderators, checked 44 848 of the 546 000 completed by learners enrolled in Kha Ri Gude in 2009. The campaign was launched in April 2008.
In its first year, 357 195 learners were enrolled, followed by 613 643 in 2009 and 610 000 in 2010. South Africa is, therefore, well on its way to achieving its EFA goal.
Key features of the campaign are:
- It relies on community participation. Members of the community help with the recruitment of teachers and learners, the selection of venues for classes, and monitoring.
- Because it uses the services of volunteers, the campaign achieves a substantial social welfare outcome in the form of job opportunities. Over the past two years, the campaign has paid out R550-million to more than 70 000 volunteers and a further 40 000 volunteers are active and earning a stipend this year.
- Classes are held at times that are convenient to learners and take place in homes, churches, mosques, schools, prisons and community centres.
- Learners do not pay for the classes, making it possible for the poorest members of the community to attend. What learners are required
to do is to commit themselves to attending classes for the duration of the academic year.
- The campaign provides 240 hours of contact tuition at times and venues that are suitable for learners.
- Literacy tuition is given in the mother tongue of the learners and classes are offered in all 11 official languages, as well as in Braille and sign language.
- The campaign is inclusive of all marginalised groups and specifically targets the homeless, rural communities, the aged, out-of-school youth, the disabled, the incarcerated, women, street children, victims of trafficking and migrants.
- All learners enrolled in the campaign are registered on a central database and their achievements are recorded to enable accreditation and validation of learning.
- All learners are assessed before being registered for the campaign. They should be either totally illiterate or have a sufficiently low level of literacy to gain access to classes.
In 2009 Kha Ri Gude was awarded the Government Communication Information System’s Umbungsweti Award for its communication strategy, in particular for its reach to remote areas and its efforts to reach deaf and blind learners. It also received the Pan South African Language Board’s award for its materials in all 11 languages.
And the Commonwealth of Learning has been granted permission by the minister of basic education to use and adapt the campaign materials for other commonwealth countries. But a more intangible, more heartwarming tribute to the campaign’s success is the joy of learners at ceremonies like the one held at the Tsolo Community Hall when they received certificates that they did not have to ask someone else to read.
Professor Veronica McKay is the chief executive of Kha Ri Gude, the department of basic education’s mass literacy campaign