September is Literacy Month, and this week September the 7th to the 11th
is Literacy week, whilst today is International Literacy Day.
According to The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), an international comparative reading assessment: 78% of Grade 4 learners in South Africa cannot read for meaning, and this is significantly worse for children tested in African languages—93% of Grade 4 students tested in Sepedi could not read for meaning with similarly large percentages among Setswana (90%), Tshivenda (89%), isiXhosa (88%), Xitsonga (88%), isiZulu (87%) and isiNdebele (87%).
Eight out of every 10 children in South Africa can’t read properly. Not in English, not in their home language, not in any language.
Out of the 50 countries surveyed, South Africa came last.
However according to StatsSA, as of 2015, South Africa's total literacy rate was around 94.37 percent, which means almost 95 percent of all South Africans could read and write.