The numbers tell a politically uncomfortable truth. A survey of all Grade 4 children in Makhanda’s no-fee public schools this year found that 51% of isiXhosa learners taught in English can read for meaning. However, for those taught in isiXhosa — despite it being their mother tongue and despite decades of policy emphasising the value […]
In November 2025, the R50 million Funda Uphumelele National Survey (FUNS) delivered the first comprehensive measurement of early-grade reading in all official languages. The findings confirmed what researchers suspected: only 31% of Grade 1 learners can identify 40 letter-sounds per minute — the minimum threshold for reading readiness. By Grade 3, 15% cannot read a […]
Lack of funds prevent provinces from carrying out their mandate to manage public library services
Research shows that classroom libraries increase reading frequency by 70% compared with centralised libraries
South Africa’s official African languages mask dozens of dialects, affecting millions, especially in rural areas
Civil society cannot solve the country’s literacy crisis on its own, because the scale is too vast and the resources required too substantial
Since 2020, the Eastern Cape Department of Education has retained about R5 billion from the budgets of its poorest schools, ostensibly for “centralised procurement”. Some of that money could have funded proven teacher support, classroom libraries, and access to abundant free digital resources – multiple times over. Rod Amner and Laney van Wyk report