World Bank report highlights critical early education crisis in South Africa

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A 2016 study found that more than half of learners in Grade 4 in the Western Cape were functionally illiterate. Reading levels dipped further in 2021 as a result of pandemic-related school closures.

The Western Cape Department of Education is battling population growth and migration which has grown learner numbers.

The situation is predicted to worsen in the next decade with an estimated 201,000 new learners entering the system in Grades 1 to 12. Provincial budget cuts will exacerbate already constrained resources.

The province recently announced that it would be cutting more than 2,400 teaching jobs from the beginning of 2025.

Amidst these budget cuts, provincial departments of education throughout the country are also grappling with how to afford a compulsory Grade 0 year, a stipulation of the recently signed Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Bill.

It’s estimated that the new compulsory Grade 0 year will cost education departments an additional R12bn a year.

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Given the already constrained education budget, something will have to give. In addition to teacher posts being cut, it’s also likely that vital programmes like the school nutrition programme and the learner transport programme will face cuts.

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Cuts on these programmes have a disproportionate impact on learners from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Other provinces face many of the same education challenges.

The Gauteng Department of Education, which has had its budget reduced by R4.5bn, has announced that it will be cutting its budget for school nutrition and scholar transport in order to save more than 3,000 teaching posts. KwaZulu-Natal is struggling with a R4bn budget deficit.

Nothing new

South Africa’s education crisis is not new with poor education outcomes reported more than a decade ago.

A 2012 report on the state of literacy teaching and learning in the foundation phase put the spotlight on inadequate literacy levels in the foundation phase revealing that the majority of Grade 2 learners struggled to read for meaning.

What is particularly concerning is that little has been done to address the problem in the intervening years. A 2023 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study revealed that 82% of learners in Grade 4 were unable to read for meaning.

A Reading Panel which aims to ensure that all children can read for meaning by 2030 concluded that the literacy crisis is worsening at the early childhood development level with learners in Grade R and Grade 2 from impoverished communities struggling to understand the basic alphabet order.

Progressive educationalists have criticised the introduction of a compulsory Grade R year, arguing that the problem is both systemic and pedagogical.

Numerous studies in the last decade have concluded that most primary school teachers exhibit poor subject content knowledge, particularly in language and maths.

A report by the Centre for Development and Enterprises (CDE) titled ‘What’s wrong with our education system’ says the Department of Basic Education’s foremost priority must be to deliver better quality education for all its learners which requires tackling the root causes of dysfunction in a coordinated manner.

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The CDE’s research reveals that the four main reasons for South Africa’s underperforming schooling system are apartheid legacy, weak teacher knowledge and unmotivated teachers, a lack of accountability throughout the system, and a captured education bureaucracy with insufficient competence.

The CDE says that while the first of these is being addressed by equalising schooling and introducing progressive spending, the other three challenges are not being tackled with appropriate measures or sufficient vigour.

System is failing children from their earliest years

What has become clear is that the education system is failing children from their earliest years. In response to increasingly poorer education outcomes, the education system keeps responding with introducing ever earlier formal education initiatives – with little success.

In addition to introducing Grade 0 – also known as Grade R – the Department of Basic Education has also toyed with the idea of introducing another year of compulsory early childhood education.

Instead of prioritising play, the system is creating more formal learning for younger and younger children despite a significant body of evidence showing the importance and value of play.

A UNICEF report titled ‘Learning through play’ says ‘learning through play’ or ‘playful learning’ is central to quality early childhood pedagogy and education.

Between the ages of three to five, play enables children to explore and make sense of the world around them, as well as to use and develop their imagination and creativity.

Between the ages of six to eight, play-based learning continues to be critical but is often neglected in favour of academic-focused education approaches.

Global research reveals that access to preschool for learners aged three to five can make a significant difference to a learner’s future performance.

However, these gains will be eradicated if the learner goes on to a poorly functioning school.

The majority of South Africa’s children are destined to attend schools delivering a sub-standard education where they will be taught by teachers who lack the necessary content knowledge and pedagogical skills and who don’t provide the right environments to play, learn, explore and discover.

The Heckman Equation

Nobel Prize winner Professor James Heckman, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, developed what has become known as The Heckman Equation to explain the gains to be had by investing in the early and equal development of human potential.

He says investing in educational and developmental resources for disadvantaged families to provide equal access to successful early human development, combined with nurturing the early development of cognitive and social skills in children from birth to age five, then sustaining that early development with effective education through to adulthood will enable a more capable, productive and valuable workforce that pays dividends to society for generations to come.

Education experts have highlighted the fact that students looking to become primary school teachers are weaker than all their peers, often entering university with only a shaky grasp of language and mathematics fundamentals.

The CDE says this may explain why the majority of final year Bachelor of Education students score less than 40% in a primary school mathematics test.

The World Bank Report is a timely one given the stark challenges we face. Amongst its recommendations to the Western Cape – but which applies equally to other provinces - is that it strengthens the foundations of learning through access to better quality early childhood development centres.

“The importance of quality ECD services in preparing children to learn when they enter school and throughout life, cannot be overestimated … Access to quality ECD services is linked to improved emotional readiness for school and equips children with the emergent language, numeracy and cognitive and non-cognitive skills that enable learning during the foundational phase of school,” says the World Bank.

In South Africa, approximately a third of children aged zero to four currently attend a formal early childhood development (ECD) centre.

The report says improving access to quality ECD services will require a multifaceted effort, including training caregivers in play-based learning, unblocking costly barriers to opening and running quality ECD centres in disadvantaged communities and supporting non-centre-based ECD services.

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Case studies from the USA and Brazil reveal massive improvements in learning levels when investments are made in pre-programmes targeting low-income areas and focusing on ensuring that learners can read and write in the first few years of primary education.

Offering Grade 0 through ECD centres is a potential solution to currently overcrowded classrooms.

However, it will be important that every ECD centre provides effective quality assurance: practitioners need appropriate qualifications and training, the centre’s infrastructure and facilities need to be fit for purpose and there needs to be sufficient and varied play materials, at a very minimum.

A comprehensive system to monitor and support the quality of early learning services also needs to be implemented while ECD centres in impoverished areas need to be equipped to provide support to young children, many of whom have suffered extreme levels of stress and trauma.

The crisis is real. When educational outcomes remain low and children cannot even read for meaning, we consign them to a life of unemployment, poverty and helplessness. We cannot allow that to continue.

Given the massive budget constraints facing South Africa’s education system, it’s imperative that we stop investing in initiatives that are not working and instead focus on the right things.