South African grade 4 pupils have been placed last out of 57 countries in an international assessment on reading.
While top-performing countries were given assessments where only 30% of the passages were easy, because of its previous performance profile, 70% of the passages given to South Africa were easy.
“But we don’t even want to look at the higher performing countries because as the minister [Angie Motshekga] said, we are competing with ourselves. This is not to say South Africa is so many points below Singapore, Hong Kong or Russia. It’s just not a comparison to make.” “We must all prioritise and devote adequate attention to enhancing learners' reading ability for meaning. Reading for meaning, or reading comprehension, is the skill of understanding and interpreting the written text.”
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