launch of Readathon 2007, Johannesburg
23 April 2007
National Director of Read Education Trust, Mrs Cynthia Hugo,
Nedbank CEO, Mr Tom Boardman,
Corporate Social Investment (CSI) Chief, Ms Xolile Caga,
Honourable guests and learners,
Ladies and gentlemen
Today is UNESCO's World Book Day. I have invited fellow South Africans,
through adverts in newspapers and a television interview, to join with
Education MECs and me in order to renew our focus on improving the standards of
reading in our schools. The day highlights the importance of books and
authorship.
Reading is a foundational skill for academic and cognitive development, as
well as for life-long success. South Africa must redouble the effort to expand
reading opportunities and to create a reading nation in South Africa. Parents,
children, workers and all in our society should be encouraged to read.
Readathon 2007 has new and innovative features. It includes the first-ever
award ceremony for those schools that won the competition established last
year.
Cynthia Hugo has played a critical role in the promotion of reading and life
skills in our schools.
In partnership with READ, and READ partners such as Nedbank and CNA, the
department has begun implementing a range of strategies directed at promoting
and expanding literacy and numeracy in our schools.
READ's active and sustained efforts such as the annual Readathon campaign
contribute enormously to the growth of a culture of reading and learning.
READ has managed to lobby a large number of businesses to contribute towards
the development of reading in our schools.
Government's responsibility is to provide teachers, textbooks and classrooms
in which children can read and learn. We should also be doing more to provide
libraries in all our schools.
Our education programme is an R80 billion investment in education.
Increased attention is being given to improving reading and writing. We have
developed a national reading programme that is composed of a number of strands.
The provinces also have a number of reading initiatives that support learning
at school.
This year we began the Drop all and Read campaign that encourages principals
to set aside a specific reading period at school.
In the past three years we have provided over 10 000 primary schools with
exciting story books, written in all official languages of South Africa, so
that they are able to establish classroom libraries. The Department of Arts and
Culture has begun to implement an imaginative community library programme that
will also support our educationâs department initiatives.
We have also supplied a number of schools with reference materials, which
have included multi-lingual dictionaries.
The Department has just completed the development of an Early-Grade Reading
Assessment instrument which we will pilot in selected districts in Sepedi,
Xitsonga, Tshivenda, isiXhosa, isiZulu and English to help teachers monitor
reading progress in their classrooms, and to help us keep an eye on how all our
schools are doing. During the course of this year the tool will be developed in
the remaining five languages.
As various research studies show reading at school alone will not make the
impact on learning that we need to improve the performance of pupils.
The critical element is the support parents provide to the learning of their
children.
The fundamental task that any education system faces is to ensure that
social deprivation does not determine academic performance. The evidence from
around the world is that it largely does. The difference between advantaged and
disadvantaged becomes apparent very early on in life. Encouraging parents to
read to their children in those vital early years can make a huge difference to
later academic success.
Various studies (largely American) suggest that a child from a professional
family is likely to have heard 45 million words by his or her fourth birthday.
A child from a working class background will have heard 26 million and a child
from a deprived background will have heard only 13 million.
This research has been gathered together by Jim Trelease in his awarding
winning book, the Read Aloud Handbook.
As he says, it is not the toys in a house that matter, but the words in a
childâs head.
A lack of vocabulary very quickly becomes a reading problem that in turn
leads to boredom and early school leaving.
Recognising the importance of early childhood learning, we have committed
more funds to this crucial period in a childâs life.
The education sector raised early childhood development as a priority in the
2005 national and provincial medium term expenditure processes, which contained
proposals for the 2006 national and provincial budgets.
The result has been a doubling of ECD planned funding between 2005 and 2007.
While this may be an increase off a fairly low base, further increases are in
the pipeline, as we plan to honour the targets set out in the White Paper 5 for
expanded access to Grade R by 2010.
We need to strengthen early reading programmes and the commitment of parents
to teaching their children to read. We also need to look at how we include
parents in these learning processes. It is important for parents and caregivers
to support their children in learning, in instilling discipline and positive
attitudes.
Intergenerational learning hubs should be used as a means of encouraging
young people to give more attention to reading and writing. Parents could also
consider learning with their children and thus bridging the gap of generations
that contributes to many of the social problems we face to-day.
Developments of such an approach will assist schools in creating a positive
learning culture and will integrate parents into the educational progress of
their children and of schools.
The 2006 Readathon announced a school reading practice campaign. The aim was
to identify good practices and expand reading.
I congratulate all schools that have prepared their portfolio to enter this
competition. The judges reported that it was a tough decision to select the
nine national winners of the Readathon Campaign 2006.
I am certain that through this competition and a glittering award ceremony
schools would prepare themselves well and enter the competition. The process of
selecting the winners has alerted us to activities that embrace our efforts to
get schools involved in literacy promotion activities.
I wish to propose that my Ministry and Read Educational Trust should develop
a means of sharing reading promotion activities with the nationa at least once
a year. We should showcase and discuss the kind of programmes that are
implemented in schools.
I wish to encourage more schools to participate in this competition to
ensure that award ceremonies are created at district, provincial and ultimately
national level.
The underlying purpose of the campaign is to provide my department and our
stakeholders such as Read with evidence that schools have exciting reading
programmes and deserve to be acknowledged in a glittering event such as this
one.
I would like to thank Nedbank, Mr Boardman â you have shown your true
commitment to literacy development. I have attended most of the Readathon
Campaign launches and your support is visible. I thank you and your team, I
also encourage other private companies to follow suit and identify a campaign
that could be part of their annual contribution to promoting literacy.
In conclusion, I wish to thank you all for your continued support to
education. To the organisers of the campaign, I wish you the best of luck for
all the planned activities. Our partnership in this endeavour means that we are
also responsible for the success of this campaign. I would like to call upon
all schools to participate in the various activities of the campaign,
particularly the writing competitions, to develop a pool of young writers who
write in their indigenous languages. I thank all the participating sponsors for
their magnanimous contributions in making this a reality.
Issued by: Department of Education
23 April 2007
