South African grade 4 pupils don't understand what they read: study

25 May 2016 - 17:52 By Nomahlubi Jordaan

Over 50% of Grade 4 learners in South Africa do not understand what they read‚ while almost 30% are illiterate.That’s according to research conducted by Stellenbosch University’s department of economics on behalf of the Zenex Foundation. The findings of the two-year study‚ titled “Laying Firm Foundations: Getting Reading Right”‚ have now been published. The focus of the research was to investigate the causes of weak South African student performance in literacy and numeracy in the Foundation Phases of Grades 1 to 3. “Students in most classes have very little opportunity to practice reading or engage with text in meaningful ways‚” said the university.“Teachers and student groups often read aloud together‚ with little attention drawn to understanding texts .… students in poor schools can often mechanically decode text‚ but have little comprehension of the content of what they are reading.”One of the authors‚ Nicholas Spaull‚ also found that the English oral reading fluency of 1‚772 Grade 5 rural students who were sampled‚ was low.Over 40% of the sample were considered to be non-readers in English‚ reading at less than 40 words correct per minute‚ “so slowly that that they could not understand what they were reading”.Eleven percent could not read a single English word from the passage.Overcrowded classroomsThe majority of learners in the Foundation Phase in South Africa are in overcrowded classrooms‚ a study has found.“There is a strong case to be made that class sizes in the early grades should be smaller than those in the higher grades‚” the research states.The maximum class size for Grades R to 4 is 35‚ 40 for Grades 5 and 6 and 37 for Grades 7 to 9.The Eastern Cape and Limpopo come up as two provinces that have more than 60 learners in classrooms between Grades 1 and 4.“If one takes a slightly larger class size threshold of 40 students per class or less‚ then three quarters of Grades 1-3 students in the Western Cape are in norm-compliant classes‚ compared to only 41 % in Gauteng‚ 43 in Limpopo and 52 % in the Eastern Cape.“It is interesting that Gauteng‚ the richest province‚ also appears to be the province where these low class size norms in the Foundation Phase are most often exceeded‚” the study reads.The study recommends that an investigation be carried out of the extent of an reasons for “extreme class sizes in some Foundation Phase classrooms and pilot strategies to reduce these”.Education..

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