ON a sunny Saturday afternoon, a group of about a dozen teenagers sit in a circle in the shade of a tree at the Paradise Creche in Mandela village, Ga-Mashashane in Limpopo province.
They are each engrossed in reading from a print-out of a poem by legendary Zimbabwean author Charles Mungoshi. Their teacher Bianca Ledwaba sitting among them patiently asks the teens to each read random lines. Some easily ace their lines but others struggle, stuttering through basic English words.
This is the weekly sitting of the Vahluri Reading Project which was established by Bianca, 47, and five other volunteers in 2012 with the aim of instilling the culture of reading among children from the village.
The South African portion of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2021 (PIRLS 2021) conducted by the University of Pretoria (UP) found that 81% of South African Grade 4 learners are struggling to read for comprehension at age 10.
The study commissioned by the Department of Basic Education and conducted by UP’s Centre for Evaluation and Assessment (CEA) also highlighted a drop in South Africa’s score point average since the previous report in 2016.
The study further found that with 288 score points, Grade 4 learners performed significantly below the PIRLS centre point of 500, and had dropped from the 320 score points that had been recorded in the previous study conducted in 2016. The 32-score point between the two cycles, PIRLS 2016 and PIRLS 2021, was evidence of a decline from one cycle to another.
The study showed that learners in rural areas performed much lower than their urban based counterparts. Grade 4 learners from more urban provinces such as the Western Cape (363) and Gauteng (320) scored significantly higher than the national score point average (288), while their more rural counterparts scored significantly lower: Mpumalanga (264), Limpopo (244) and North West (232).
This and the fact that there is no library or other recreational amenities for children in this area are among the key reasons behind the establishment of this initiative.
“I always found that teachers were always lamenting that children couldn’t read,” says Bianca, who came face to face with these harsh realities while working for the department of education in Mpumalanga over a decade ago.
When she returned home to Limpopo to take up another position at a TVET College in Polokwane, she organised her peers to establish the club in a bid to help learners improve their reading skills.
But getting Vahluri off the ground wasn’t easy.
“We struggled with a venue. We were forced to move from one venue to another, close when while we were looking for a venue until we were welcomed here last year,” she says.
In a crammed classroom in one of the blocks further away from where Ledwaba and her class sit, another group of younger children sit at different tables, writing and reading under the supervision of their teachers Shibe Monyamane and Matshidiso Mokonyama.
The little ones are engrossed in their work whilst others listen animatedly to stories. Later they go out for a snack and others use the opportunity to play on the swings and engage in board games like chess.
“We share stories. The greatest aim is to expose them to all forms of literature, share stories with them and help them to love reading, everything, whether a newspaper or an article, just about anything,” Bianca explains.
At the moment the children are taught to read in English and Northern Sotho but the project aims to introduce the Northern Ndebele which is spoken here but is not one of the country’s official languages.
“There are no books written in that language [Northern Ndebele] so we hope to translate some of the stories into Northern Ndebele in future,” she says.
At present Vahluri has 38 children who attend classes every Saturday. The lessons are free and the volunteers don’t get paid either. And with more resources the number could be greater.
“The venue was given to us for free. I have always collected story books and we also make use of book from Nal’ibali. But we are always looking for new books and other reading material to help the children improve,” says Bianca.
While the use of technology has become common practice in educating children, here it is somewhat of a challenge as most of the children have no cellphones or laptops.
Recently members of the SA National Defence Force visited the project and donated 63 books. Vahluri are hoping more such interventions will come as word about their work reaches more ears.
“We just to have them reading, be familiar with all sorts of things, be exposed to all sorts of things and be aware of the environment they live in so that they become comfortable,” Ledwaba says.
“We are looking for someone that can help us with drama because we believe drama allows the children to be creative, to be themselves. We would like to have training on how to run a reading club so that we know how to deal with learners,” she says. – news@mukurukuru.co.za
