South Africa's Children "Cannot Read" (But 2 Out of 11 Languages Ain't Bad)

by Jordan Yerman | November 29, 2007 at 06:55 am

295 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

The results were published from an international literacy study, and those results are very troubling: 80% of South African students do not reach the lowest benchmark of the study, compared wtih 6% in the rest of the test group. The results are somewhat misleading, though, since South Africa had 11 national languages. Over 80% of students tested did surpass the lowest benchmark, they failed in the other nine languages.

Almost 80% of South African pupils do not develop basic reading skills by the time they reach grade five, a new international study released on Thursday shows.

The Progress in International Reading Literacy study was conducted in 40 countries and carried out locally by the University of Pretoria's Centre for Evaluation and Assessment.

It shows that South African pupils achieved the lowest score compared with children in the other 39 countries.

South Africa's official languages are English, Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Ndebele, Venda, Swati, Sesotho, Tsonga, and Tswana.