SA children say they really like to read, despite dismal reading test results

Grade 3 is an interesting time to test children for reading ability in South Africa. Children are taught in one of the 11 official languages (ostensibly their home language) in their first years of school, known as the foundation phase, from Grade R to Grade 3.

From Grade 4, the “language of learning and teaching”, or language of instruction, becomes predominantly English or Afrikaans, although there are moves to change this and extend home-language instruction.

Research shows that there are benefits in teaching young children foundational reading skills in their home language, even if the results of the latest surveys don’t appear to hold that up.

In the past five years, two surveys have found that our Grade 3s and Grade 4s can’t read for meaning. The first, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s (IEA’s) 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) tested Grade 4s and involved children in 57 countries.

The second, a local survey called the South African Systemic Evaluation (SASE), involved 56,650 learners from 1,688 schools. It looked at the reading and mathematics abilities of Grade 3, 6 and 9 learners across the country.

The Department of Basic Education released the results of the SASE only in December 2024.

In both surveys, the children who were tested in Afrikaans and English scored higher than the children who wrote the test in the other nine languages. In Pirls, English and Afrikaans were the only two languages where the average scores were relatively close to 400, the minimum required to show an ability to read for meaning in easy texts.

SASE scores by language. (Graphic: Supplied)

In the SASE, the reading skills and knowledge learners are expected to be proficient at are divided into four performance levels. The first level, named “emerging”, is where learners are just beginning to develop the skills required for grade 3-level reading. The next level up, known as “evolving”, is where learners are beginning to construct and adapt what they have learnt. The third level, called “enhancing”, is where learners demonstrate that they actually have the required skills, are able to apply those skills and show they are moving towards independent learning. At the highest, “extending” level, learners show an advanced understanding of the knowledge and skills required, apply their knowledge in creative ways and can learn independently.

Learners need to have “enhancing”-level skills to meet the requirements of Grade 3. Only one in five of the Grade 3s who took part achieved that level.

Mother tongue

Seventy-five percent of the Grade 3s in South Africa’s public schools are taught in their home language, according to the Department of Basic Education.

Professor Abdeljalil Akkari, an expert in education at the University of Geneva, argues that “pre-primary is the educational sector which has the greatest need to be based on local pedagogy, traditions and cultures”.

South Africa was one of the few countries that ran the Pirls test in multiple languages. While in theory, students testing in their home language rather than only English should equalise the assessment playing field, results showed that this was not in fact the case. 

Researchers have pointed out some testing issues with Pirls, such as how translating a European test into African languages may create more issues than it solves. An example given by researchers at the University of Pretoria is how the isiZulu version of the Pirls test needed to use foreign words in translations such as “i-Hammerhead shark”. 

They show that due to translations, the isiZulu and English texts used in Pirls aren’t equivalent, resulting in a harder test for the isiZulu schools compared with the English schools.

Language of instruction

If you look in more detail at the data on the language of instruction at schools, about a third of South Africa’s Grade 3s are actually taught in English, even though English is the home language of fewer than 10% of them. 

Languages spoken in Grade 3. (Graphic: Supplied)

Not surprisingly, 98% of the Grade 3s whose home language is English are taught in English at school; 92% of Afrikaans-speaking children are taught in Afrikaans.

The picture is different for African language speakers. Children whose home language is isiNdebele are the least likely to be taught in their home language at 50%, according to DBE data.

Sesotho speakers fare marginally better at 52%. More than 70% of the children who speak isiXhosa, Siswati, Setswana, Sepedi and Tshivenda were taught in their home language, as were two-thirds of children who speak Xitsonga and isiZulu.

Home language vs language of instruction, Grade 3. (Graph: Supplied)

Provincial differences

Provincial reading scores from the SASE showed that in the Western Cape, close to half the Grade 3s could read up to the required standard. In Gauteng, that dropped to 28% and in all the other provinces, fewer than 20% of the learners had Grade 3-level reading skills. 

Six languages are of particular concern because more than 40% of Grade 3 learners managed to achieve only the most basic performance level in their reading skills in the reading assessments. They are Sepedi, Setswana, Sesotho, isiNdebele, Tshivenda and Xitsonga.

Those languages are predominantly spoken in the four provinces that scored the lowest in the SASE reading assessment: the Northern Cape, Mpumalanga, North West and Limpopo, according to Nwabisa Makaluza, a researcher at Stellenbosch University, who contributed an advisory note for the Reading Panel 2025 Background Report.

In these provinces, a high percentage of Grade 3 learners are taught in their home language. For example, 87% in the Northern Cape, 72% in Mpumalanga, 79% in North West and 92% in Limpopo. 

In comparison, in Gauteng, only two in every five learners (43%) are taught in their home language.

Gauteng is the most linguistically diverse province. No home language is truly dominant. The most commonly spoken language is isiZulu, but only one in four Grade 3s speak isiZulu at home. More than 20,000 Grade 3 learners speak Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi and English at home, more than 10,000 speak Xitsonga, Afrikaans and isiXhosa.

This diversity makes teaching in all the home languages a complicated affair, requiring teachers trained to teach foundation phase learners in multiple languages. Despite its linguistic diversity, and the relatively low proportion of learners taught in their home language, Gauteng’s Grade 3 learners did better in SASE reading tests than all but those in the Western Cape.

Grade 3 language by province. (Graphic: Supplied)

The standard of education, quality of teaching and availability of resources in the public schools may also play a part in the poor reading assessment results of children.

Not enough African language teachers

South Africa’s universities are not producing enough teachers to meet the demand for foundation phase teachers who can teach in African languages, according to a Department of Basic Education report by education economist Martin Gustafsson.

The most recently available data, which was for 2018, shows the languages with the biggest undersupply of teachers are Sepedi, isiXhosa and Setswana.

Only three languages are producing enough teachers for the foundation phase: Tshivenda, Siswati and isiNdebele. 

“Some African languages are producing as little as 20% of the required number of language of learning and teaching-specific teachers,” according to the report.

Most-spoken languages 1996-2022. (Graphic: Supplied)

The language in which children are taught to read is just one factor. There are historical factors, such as the channelling of resources during apartheid to white schools where English and Afrikaans were the languages of instruction. Thirty years later, many of those schools remain better resourced.

Access to learning material

“Children learn better and are more likely to pursue their subsequent studies when they have begun their schooling in a language that they use and understand,” says Professor Abdeljalil Akkari.

South Africa’s education policy states that the language of learning and teaching must be the learner’s “home language”, but it is the school that chooses which language is to be regarded as the home language for their learners, so in many cases the official home language is not actually their mother tongue, says Sinethemba Mthimkhulu and other Pretoria University researchers.

In addition, educational resources are primarily designed for English-speaking learners. The actual language profile of the country is not at all reflected in textbook publications. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, many countries have incorporated digital learning into their schooling.

The 2024 SA Book Publishing Survey shows that 1,130 new digital textbooks were published in English, more than 600 in Afrikaans and fewer than 300 were published in all the other South African languages combined.

More worrying is the lack of new print textbooks being published in Sepedi, Setswana, SiSwati, Sesotho, isiNdebele, Xitsonga and Tshivenda. It’s not only textbooks, other reading materials also show an English and Afrikaans dominance in a country where two in five people speak isiZulu and isiXhosa.

Textbooks. (Graphic: Supplied)

The National Reading Barometer, through the National Reading Survey, found that access to books in home languages is still a huge problem in South Africa.

The survey found that 72% of parents who read with their young children would prefer to read in an African language.

It also found that schools are the most important source of reading materials in South African households. In many cases (40%), the books that adults read with their children at home are school textbooks and 33% are fiction books.

Looking at all books in general, fewer than 10% of book sales are for African language books, according to data from the latest South African Book Publishing Industry Survey.

In the period from 2021-2024, fewer than 1% of book sales in South Africa were isiNdebele or siSwati books, and Sepedi and Sesotho publications each accounted for only 1%. isiZulu publications account for just 3% of these book sales and, although English is the home language of fewer than 10% of the population, English books made up 80% of the total book revenue, the book publishing industry survey shows.

Two out of three households (63%) do not have any fiction or nonfiction books at all (this excludes bibles, magazines, textbooks etc). Most speakers of Xitsonga, isiNdebele and Tshivenda don’t have a single book in their language at home, and more than 40% of Setswana and Sesotho speakers don’t have any books in theirs, according to the 2023 National Reading Survey findings.

African language books. (Graphic: Supplied)

Let the children read

Despite the immense problems with reading, inequality and lack of resources, these reading surveys also reveal a shining light of hope, which is that South Africa’s children actually like reading.

Along with the Pirls reading test were various surveys, for the parents, school teachers and principals, as well as the children themselves. In the children’s questionnaire, one of the questions asked whether they enjoyed reading. More than 70% of South Africa’s children enthusiastically said they enjoyed reading, the 11th highest percentage of the 57 countries participating in the survey.

In an “enjoyment of reading” index, which encompassed a range of questions, Pirls found that 90% of the South African children like reading to some extent, and 50% of those like reading “very much”. DM

This project was completed with the support of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation for Investigative Journalism.