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Every year South Africans spend twice as much on chocolate than they do on books

Research shows that grit is a strong predictor of reading achievement. This suggests that socio-emotional skills are important for student achievement, even in high-poverty contexts.

Children benefit enormously from regular, cognitively stimulating interactions with their caregivers.

Research tells us that multilingual literacy matters. But teaching children in Africa to read in their mother tongues as a springboard to literacy in other languages can be a fraught process.

The problem in learners’ reading performance lies in how reading is taught in most South African schools. Learners are not taught to understand the written word and make sense of it for themselves.

A pilot programme in 15 schools demonstrates how targeted, structured interventions can rapidly close foundational literacy gaps.

It may seem that in Africa, oral culture has the upper hand over literacy. But this is not the case.

New insights show that South Africa’s education system is heading in the right direction.

Reading fluency and expanding vocabulary are the bridge from decoding to comprehension. Weaknesses in any of these building blocks will limit a child’s ability to read for meaning.

Academic literacy is a mode of reasoning that aims to develop university students into deep thinkers, critical readers and writers.