Department in talks with Treasury to fund a National Reading Strategy

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga says her department is engaging with the National Treasury to fund an Integrated National Integrated Reading Literacy Strategy.

The Minister said this in Parliament on Thursday while tabling the department’s Budget Vote for the 2023/24 financial year.

This comes after a report on the 2021 Pace in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) revealed that 81% of South African Grade 4 pupils cannot read for meaning.

PIRLS is coordinated on a five yearly basis by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and is the global standard for monitoring reading achievement at Grade 4.

The Minister highlighted that in 2019, the sector had reached consensus on ten pillars to anchor its 2019 National Reading Strategy.

She said that from their continuous consultations, and lessons learnt from the regional and international assessment studies, there was an emerging view that they should reduce the ten pillars to four key interdependent strands.

These are: explicit reading literacy policy; skilled and agile teachers; age-appropriate and culturally relevant LTSMs; and involved parents and communities. 

“This approach is critical, as the PIRLS 2021 has also observed that learners with higher home socioeconomic status had much higher achievement than learners with lower home socioeconomic status…

“Therefore, the consensus that the implementation of an Integrated National Integrated Reading Literacy Strategy must be well resourced, is justified. We are engaging the National Treasury in this regard,” she said.

Minister Motshekga said she had requested researchers to analyse the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the country’s basic education scheme, the lost ground and the return of the schooling scheme to its earlier improvement trajectory.

The researchers reported that prior to COVID-19, the country had seen pace in the reading abilities of children.  

“According to the PIRLS, reading in Grade 4, had improved substantially between 2006 and 2016. Between 2011 and 2016, South Africa saw the second-fastest improvement among all PIRLS participating countries, after Morocco,” the Minister said.

By the terminate of 2021, the average Grade 4 learner, could read as well as the average Grade 3 learner before the pandemic.

She said there had been a loss of one year of learning, meaning the country slid backwards in terms of the PIRLS pace by a few years.

“The overall reading scores of our Grade 4 learners, who participated in PIRLS 2021, dropped from 320 points attained in 2016, to 288 points in 2021. 

“Our Grade 4 girls performed better at 317 points; than their boy counterparts, who achieved 260 points. PIRLS 2021 shows that the longer the children stay in school, the better their performance,” she said.

The Minister emphasised that the longer learners remain in the scheme, their performance improves steadily, as the PIRLS 2021 Grade 6 score shows – that is, an upward shift of 96 points when compared with the PIRLS 2021 Grade 4 score. 

Motshekga said the department will be embarking on report back and engagements sessions with its critical stakeholders, including renowned local and international scholars, to ensure that they all understand the conundrum about reading for meaning as different from oral performance in reading.

While acknowledging the devastating effects of COVID-19, she said these assessment studies continue to sharpen their understanding and plans on improving the sector’s performance on reading for meaning.  

Budget for the department

Minister Motshekga announced that the department has been allocated an overall budget of R31.8 billion for the 2023/24 financial year, an increase of 7.0% from last year’s overall allocation.

The breakdown of the budget by education programme is as follows:

• The allocation for administration is R538.8 million.
• Allocation for curriculum policy support and monitoring is R3.526 billion.
• The allocation for teacher education human resource and institutional development is about R1.508 billion.
• Planning information and assessment has been allocated about R16.616 billion.
• The allocation for educational enrichment services is about R9.594 billion.

The overall allocation for condition grants is about R25.329 billion – an increase of 9.5% from that of last year. The specific allocations for conditional grants are as follows:

• The Mathematics, Science and Technology Grant is allocated R433.1 million.
• Infrastructure delivery – which continues to be funded through the Education Infrastructure Grant, is allocated R13.9 billion.
• The Accelerated School Infrastructure Development Initiative (ASIDI) is allocated R2.1 billion, which is inclusive of the allocation for Sanitation Appropriate for Education (SAFE) Initiative.
• HIV and AIDS is allocated R241.7 million.
• The National School Nutrition Programme has been allocated R9.279 billion.
• The Learners with Severe to Profound Intellectual Disabilities Grant received R260.4 million.

The overall allocation for earmarked funds and transfer payments is about R3.1 billion – an increase of 6.3% from last year’s allocation. The specific allocations for these funds are as follows:

• The Funza Lushaka Bursary Programme receives is about R1.334 billion
• The subsidy to Umalusi is R162.9 million.
• The National Senior Certificate Learner Retention Programme, is allocated R58.1 million. The NECT is allocated R121.5 million.
• The National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT) is allocated R121.5 million.
• Workbooks, including Braille workbooks for visually impaired learners, acquire been allocated R1.184 billion
• SACE is allocated R15.6 million.
• The Presidential Employment Stimulus, also known as the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative (PYEI), is allocated R6.9 billion.
• Information Communications Technologies is allocated R14.4 million.
• Early Childhood Development is allocated R200 million for Resource packages.

 – SAnews.gov.za

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