A South African education institute based in Stellenbosch has celebrated a potential breakthrough in addressing the country’s literacy and numeracy crisis.
In a recent survey, young children from disadvantaged community achieved exceptional literacy scores, significantly outperforming the national average.
The recent survey conducted in the impoverished Kayamandi township in Stellenbosch, where a CoRE training program began just a few years ago by the Indaba Institute, children aged four and five (taught by CoRE-trained teachers) recorded 94% scores for “Emergent Literacy & Language”, against an average of 71% in the Western Cape and 54.7% nationally.
A 20-40% positive deviance is statistically very significant, given that the Kayamandi sampling are from quintile 1 and 2 learners.
And in “Emergent Numeracy & Mathematics”, the children who have benefited from Indaba-trained teachers scored 57%, as compared with 47% in the Western Cape and 33.9% Nationally. Once again, the 10-20% positive deviance is a critical showcase of outcomes.
South Africa has an ongoing crisis in literacy and numeracy education that is universally acknowledged.
The 2021 Thrive by Five Index, released in April 2022, is the largest survey of preschool child development ever undertaken in South Africa.
This Index highlighted, amongst other metrics, that a staggering 57% of children enrolled in ELPs in South Africa FAIL to thrive by five.
But the Indaba Institute, based in Stellenbosch, has now recorded a rare glimpse of hope.
According to Indaba founder and chairman André Shearer, Indaba delivers “Community-Rooted Education (CoRE)”, which trains teachers in the heart of their own communities.
Instead of a “top-down” lecturing approach, the CoRE programme trains and empowers women teachers to dramatically improve the education they offer to young children in their care, in their own ECD centres.
“These promising and impressive outcomes reflect the positive impact of CoRE, as teachers have clearly been empowered to enhance their children’s abilities in the two key metrics driving the devastating academic outcomes in South Africa’s education system – numeracy and literacy,” says Mr Shearer.
The survey was conducted by Data Drive 2030, which used the Early Learning Outcome Measures (ELOMs) 4-5 assessment tool, and compared against benchmarks taken from the Thrive by Five 2021 Index.
The Thrive by Five Index found that 50% of children face barriers to thriving which limit their chances of realising their full potential, reported the organisation Innovation Edge.
Only 43% of these children will be starting their formal education with the right foundations in place.
By comparison, Indaba describes its ability to enhance children’s life-chances by training women teachers both in innovative teaching methods – and to harness local language, culture, resources and creativity.
In this manner, teachers mobilise their own communities to collectively cherish and rally behind quality ECD education – even for poverty-stricken children.
Education Minister of South Africa, Siviwe Gwarube, said in July the national department’s most crucial priorities were: “Firstly, we will intensify efforts to improve access to and quality of early childhood development, recognising that the formative years are critical to laying a strong foundation for our children’s education journey.
:Secondly, we are steadfast on improving literacy and numeracy skills across all phases of schooling.”
A promising pathway to transformation
“Indaba has demonstrated how this can be achieved, with the CoRE programme,’’ adds Mr Shearer.
“The implications of the results we’ve managed to achieve in the ELOMs are nothing short of a revelation. Since we started the Indaba Institute, we’ve realized we have to find a way that contributes to the dramatic transformation of society.
“If you look at the literacy and numeracy crisis in South Africa, it is unprecedented and it is unbelievably complicated, and it threatens the future of the well-being of South Africa, unless we get it right.
“The ELOMs, related to the CoRE program in Kayamandi, in one of the hardest-hit townships in the country, found within the context of some of the greatest Gini Coefficients in the world, have yielded a literacy and numeracy outcome significantly higher than the benchmarks.”
This offers a real pathway to transformation for South Africa. These results are third-party verification of five metrics, two of which are clearly the most important in the context of South Africa’s education system.
Literacy and numeracy
“I think that’s the most exciting development since we launched our work in 2015,” Mr Shearer said.
The recent assessment produced key findings which will inform their strategy and action plans to highlight areas needing further intervention and improvement, particularly in fine and gross motor skills.
Indaba believes this is a systemic issue in the vulnerable, poverty-stricken communities it serves, where many ECD centres lack safe outdoor play and recreation spaces and the costlier fine motor skill resources to provide children with the activities necessary to develop these critical skills.
Understanding these challenges immediately enables the CoRE facilitator to focus on equipping practitioners with the tools and strategies to better support children’s development in these areas.
The Early Learning Outcomes Measure (ELOM) is a set of population-based child assessment tools designed to determine whether children are developmentally on track for their age.
The tools also establish whether an Early Childhood Development (ECD) programme is effective in preparing children for entry into school, and identify areas for programmatic improvement.
The ELOM 4 & 5 Years Assessment tool enables direct assessment of crucial milestones, including gross and fine motor coordination and visual motor integration, emergent literacy and language, early numeracy, and cognitive and executive functioning.
Mr Shearer concluded: “The results from this recent survey are a powerful testament to what is possible when we empower teachers at the grassroots level with the right tools, training, and support.
“The CoRE programme has proven that, with the right approach, even in the most impoverished communities, we can achieve remarkable improvements in literacy and numeracy. However, this is just the beginning.
“While these outcomes are a step in the right direction, we know that we still have a long way to go.
“At Indaba, we remain committed to this vision of a transformed education system, where every child, regardless of their background, has access to the quality education they deserve. These results show that change is not only possible, it is already happening.”
