Some of the solutions are not in the classrooms
MAKHANDA: In November 2025, the R50 million Funda Uphumelele National Survey (FUNS) delivered the first comprehensive measurement of early-grade reading in all official... Read more.
Why mother-tongue education is failing our children
MAKANDA: In Makhanda, children taught in English outperform those taught in their ‘mother tongue’ by more than two to one. The data doesn’t prove mother-tongue... Read more.
How funding apartheid fail young library users
MAKHANDA: When Grade 11 learner Sipho Mthembu arrives on Monday afternoons at Duna Library, his local facility in Joza, Makhanda, he’s not looking for books to... Read more.
Consider the 19%: What happens to those who can, in fact, read for meaning?
MAKHANDA: Much attention is paid to the 81% of South Africa's Grade 4s who cannot read for meaning. Leanne Kelly and Rod Amner consider the stories of those from... Read more.
Give children high-quality books from Grades R-12: they will likely read them
MAKHANDA: Lucky Xaba, the Humanities librarian at Rhodes University, arrives at a no-fee school in Makhanda to check on the colourful classroom library she and her... Read more.
When home tongues clash with classroom words
MAKHANDA: In the move to have children learn literacy in their home language in their early school years, the many who speak dialects other than official languages... Read more.
How a broken city doubled SA’s literacy rate
MAKHANDA: Makhanda embodies contradiction. The Auditor General rates Makana Municipality’s performance in the bottom 2.8% of South Africa’s local governments.... Read more.
R5 billion withheld: The EC school funding crisis
MAKHANDA: Since 2020, the Eastern Cape Department of Education has retained about R5 billion from the budgets of its poorest schools, ostensibly for “centralised... Read more.