These schools are turning language barriers into learning success
ORANGE FARM: At Laus Deo Primary and Lehae Primary School, teachers are demonstrating that language should never be a barrier to learning. In classrooms where children speak Isizulu, Sesotho, Tshivenda, Xhosa and Xitsonga at home, these educators are finding creative ways to turn challenges into opportunities and to build a lifelong love for reading.
The struggle is real when it comes to the language of learning in classrooms
NORTH WEST PROVINCE: Setswana-speaking Oarabile from rural Kgabalatsane Village in the North West, struggles with a lack of resources and qualified mother tongue teachers at her school. Xitsonga-raised Tsakane, from urban Soshanguve in Gauteng, navigates a complex multilingual environment and the dominance of English as a language of learning and teaching (LOLT).
Makhanda shows the way with home-language literacy
MAKHANDA: The extent of South Africa’s literacy crisis has been laid bare with the Department of Basic Education’s new early learning reading benchmarks, covering 11 official languages. The benchmarks, which will be tracked over years to come, are the result of a R50-million survey that took seven years to develop and research.
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 education is wrong — it reveals the gap between policy ideals and classroom realities.
Sandpits and Story Circles – How Lenasia South and Orange Farm pre-schools are rewriting their own literacy story
ORANGE FARM: In a country where less than half of Grade 4 learners can read for meaning, educators in Orange Farm and Lenasia South are demonstrating the power of community initiatives to close the gaps.
In the heart of Orange Farm Ext 1, a group of preschoolers sit cross-legged around a sandpit, tracing letters in the dust. “B + A + L + L = ball,” chants their educator, Dimakatso Mbele in English. She then repeats the exercise in isiZulu and Sesotho.
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 the “other 19%”.
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 team built a few months before. The teacher is absent, but the Grade 1 children are all there, books in hand, reading independently on cushions. On her second visit, they eagerly recount every plotline they’ve read.
20 books make all the difference in a home
MAKHANDA: In the Masete household in Ghost Town, Makhanda, a young girls holds both a baby and a book, confidently reading aloud to her siblings and cousins. It wasn’t always like this. It was a transformation that began with a simple parcel of books dropped at their gate during the height of COVID restrictions.
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 are losing out. This may explain why many do worse in “home” language tests than those testing in English.