PIRLS of wisdom

What explains South Africa’s dire education outcomes and what to do about it

Countless newspaper columns over the last three decades have tackled South Africa’s biggest headache: our failing education system. The last two weeks were no exception. If you somehow missed the news, here are the headlines from the recently released PIRLS 2021 South Africa Report: 81% of Grade 4 learners in South Africa cannot read for meaning in any language. This is a decline of three percentage points in the five years between 2016 and 2021. To put South African children’s reading ability in perspective: the average Brazilian Grade 4 child is three years ahead of the average South African Grade 4 child.

PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) is an independently administered and nationally representative assessment of reading comprehension for a sample of Grade 4 learners. The test is comparable over time and across countries. It is the gold standard of education surveys. And it makes for terrible reading.

It is a tragedy on a scale that is difficult to comprehend: of the 1.1 million children in Grade 4, 914 000 could not read for meaning. But such vast numbers can easily hide the tragic stories these numbers represent: stories of kids – Afikile, Boitumelo, Chelsea – that are unlikely to succeed at higher grades because how does one pass science, history, or English literature, for example, without the ability to read? And, remember, another 900 000 kids will pass through Grade 4 next year, learning nothing. And the year after. The report, rightly, does not hold back, calling it a ‘generational catastrophe’.

I asked Nic Spaull, Stellenbosch University economist and author of the report, why we don’t see improvement. Surely politicians can see the disaster unfolding, so what prevents them from implementing change?

The catastrophic low-level equilibrium within the SADTU-ANC alliance is an obvious starting point. The alliance prevents any attempt to introduce accountability into the system. It also means that teachers’ interests always trump learners’ interests. So rather than hiring more teachers (increasing headcount) the government have paid teachers more (above inflation) for over a decade.

So what can be done? Spaull and his team recommend four interventions: 1) recruiting, training and equipping youth to be Teacher Assistants, 2) providing anthologies of graded readers to all grade 1-3 children, 3) training teachers face-to-face and equipping them with comprehensive workbooks and teacher guides, and 4) using teacher-coaches to support teachers on how to teach reading. All four of these suggestions are based on peer-reviewed research, promising improvement.

And indeed, because PIRLS is standardised over time, it is useful to see that things were, albeit slowly, improving: because of some policy interventions, the percentage of Grade 4’s who could not read fell from 87% to 78% in the ten years between 2006 and 2016. Sadly, Covid destroyed a decade of progress. It is today small consolation to know that things have been worse.

Ultimately, though, decades of poor performance demand more drastic action. South Africa simply cannot afford to fail another generation. We need a radical departure from our present morass.

As is now common in many spheres of South African society, where the government fails, the market often offers a solution. According to the Department of Basic Education School Realities-EMIS reports, between 2012 and 2021, the number of kids enrolled in public schools in South Africa increased from 11.9 million to 12.7 million, an increase of 7%. By contrast, the number of kids in independent (or private) schools increased from 501 000 to 703 000, an increase of 40%. Although private schools are still a fraction of the total (little more than 5%), it is here that a radical solution must be found.

Private education, of course, raises fears of exclusion, a particular concern in a country already marred by high levels of inequality. To mitigate this, South Africa could take cues from Sweden, where over 10% of children have enrolled in private schools thanks to a 1992 reform that allocates public funding to schools based on enrolment numbers. In this system, private schools, unable to discriminate or levy additional fees, offer services and curricula catered to their community's needs, spurred by entrepreneurial drive and innovation.

In a 2017 column, I outlined how such a similar voucher programme can work. I noted how the per-student spending in South Africa’s budget is very similar to the cheapest Curro private school fee. If the government were to provide school vouchers of R23 000 per student (roughly the amount when you divide the total basic education budget – R293.7 billion – by the number of students in public schools – 12.7 million), parents would be able to choose the school best suited for their child, public or private. This would not only empower parents but also stimulate entrepreneurship, leading to improved facilities and teacher quality.

I noted other benefits, too: Research suggests that mother-tongue education is critical for student success: with a voucher system, if there is a demand for secondary education in Sesotho in a specific community, expect an entrepreneur to spot the gap. Another concern for the near future is the dearth of university-trained teachers: private school chains will be incentivised to fix this, either by training their own teachers on the job, or by investing in teacher training colleges.

Research on voucher programmes confirms their ability to improve education outcomes, especially for those at the bottom of the distribution. A large 2021 study that combines evidence from 11 different voucher programmes finds moderate evidence of positive achievement impacts. They emphasise the large variation in the results: some voucher programmes do well, while others fail to make much of an impact. But even those with little impact, they argue, seem to be more cost-effective. In short: when your education system is as dismal as South Africa’s, the upside is large.

These ideas are gaining traction, even if they are still mostly on the fringes of policy debates. Build One South Africa, Mmusi Maimani’s new political party, include school vouchers as a policy priority: they hope to introduce ‘a school voucher programme that returns the power back to the learner’s parents to decide which school a child attends.’ That is a start, but more voices from opposition parties are needed.

Given the SADTU-ANC alliance, as Spaull emphasise, there is virtually no chance of substantial reforms before the results of the 2024 elections are known. South African children will continue to learn nothing in school. And should the ANC remain in power next year, with no inclination for implementing something like a school voucher programme, expect another generation of post-apartheid kids – the Afikiles, Boitumelos, and Chelseas – to be deprived of their potential futures.

An edited version of this article was first published on News24. Image created with Midjourney v5.1.