Start early, start at home, say experts on reading culture for children

Children not being able to read is a multifaceted problem and needs a grassroots approach, say children literature experts.

The annual 2030 Reading Panel revealed that only 18% of children in grade 4 can read for meaning, and it is estimated this cohort is a full year behind same age children from 2019.

This new research suggests that the wheels are coming off at the beginning of the learning-to read journey, letter-sound knowledge in grade 1. The process of learning to read begins when children start to match the sounds that they hear in spoken language with text in their environment and written on the page.

Dorette Louw, owner of an online publishing company for children's books, Book Dash, said the impact of the gap is bound to rear its head when the cohort goes to matric and ultimately the workplace.

“This impacts individual economic prospects. Some people might end up not getting opportunities they want because of a lack of comprehension. You need to teach all the foundational structure of literary before they go to school, before they reach five years of age.

“Teachers at the grade 4 level are not necessarily trained to teach children how to read, by then the children should already be equipped. Early development can make a world of difference, it’s a critical stage.

“Children need to have someone trained to teach them how to identify words and conceptualise them. Not just someone who loves them and looks after them, it needs to be a professional, hence they need to go to crèche,” said Louw.

Subject advisers are themselves not well-versed to train teachers for them to impart knowledge to children.

“They typically have inadequate knowledge of how to teach reading themselves — typically scoring 50% on tests measuring this. There are also simply too few of them to realistically train teachers they are responsible for,” said the Reading Panel's report.

Louw said children learn best by playing. 

“Even at home you need to learn how to keep them engaged. If they like to read or listen to the same story, that is fine, as long as they are interested. If they are having fun, they are bound to learn better.

“There is no single or simple solution to this, it’s a complex issue.

“They are visual beings, they are bound to like books and gravitate towards reading if they are in a home with books. They must see themselves as readers and get to love books. Our vision is that every child should have at least 100 books at the age of five. But books are expensive, so our platform is a great resource for parents.

“Parents have a big role to play in keeping their children engaged,” said Louw.

According to the report, children are deemed to know most of the letters correctly if they can sound out 26 or more letters correctly in one minute and know all the letters if they can sound out 40 or more letters correctly in one minute.

“According to the curriculum, children should learn all the single letters of the alphabet (not digraphs and trigraphs) by term 2 of grade 1. At most, only 40% of children learn most of the letters of the alphabet by the end of grade 1, and even at the end of grade 2, more than 30% still don’t know all the letters of the alphabet,” found the report.

Publisher and education consultant Patti McDonald said there are resources parents can use to prepare their children for formal schooling. She said online platforms like Nali Bali, Book Dash and Word World can be used to read to children and acquaint them to words if parents cannot afford hard copies.

“Some of these children are poor, their parents are working full-time and have no time. There are unbelievable levels of poverty in this country that impact access to early development training for children,” she said.

“The government should be shamed for what it has done to our children. Parents who have time, should go and volunteer to read to children in schools and be involved in the greater enrichment of children.

“We will only survive if we work at a community level. Waiting for government to make a plan is futile, we know it’s never going to happen. Parents need to stretch themselves beyond their daily struggles, we have to be activists for everything.”