It’s almost 3 years since the revelation hit the country that South Africa was placed bottom of the class out of 50 countries in an international assessment measuring reading literacy skills of Grade 4s. The assessment showed 81% of ten-year old learners were unable read for basic understanding in their home language.
The Domino Foundation’s educational team stepped forward to tackle the challenge in the more senior grades in one of the schools in which it works. A “literacy champion” was sponsored by a firm of attorneys for 2025 and 2026 and is making great headway. “But,” commented Thobile Msani, head of Domino’s Life Skills cohort, “we knew it was vital to tackle the problem down at the lower end of the scale. So, this year, four of our youth workers have been given the specific brief to give foundational English lessons to 400 Grade 4 learners, in groups of between 40 and 60, at Inanda and Ekuthuleni Primary schools”.
The quartet has been trained for the task through the Neema Gateway into Reading programme with further in-house training from Domino’s Education Co-ordinator, Nicky Walton. One of them, Wandile Ntsimbi, said, “The children struggle to distinguish between letter sounds and names. While some can write words as they sound, there is a group of learners who cannot write a single word.” His colleague, Nonhlanhala Majola, added, “We keep our weekly lessons fun and they are a safe place where children can speak up and speak out, practicing saying the sounds of the alphabet, and spelling out 3-letter words”.
The weekly classes are read to so they hear English being spoken rather than it just being an academic exercise.
Thobile went further, explaining that the youth workers are not replacing the regular teachers: “They stay in the classroom to watch and support the Life Skills team who will conduct lessons for the first two terms. In term 3, the teachers will do part of the lesson while we watch them so that, by term 4, they are able to take the whole Gateway into Reading lessons with their class”.
