The system of public education in the post-apartheid period remains deeply unequal. The inequality starts in the earliest parts of the system. Research suggests that a child’s relationship to reading and writing with meaning in the early years of schooling largely frames her future educational experience.
While approximately 20% of schools located in urban and middle class areas provide young children with a good chance to read with meaning by Grade 3, up to 70% of the system, serving African language speaking children and their communities do not support children to read and write by the end of primary schooling.
While there is a lot of research and development work in English dominant school settings, there is much less detailed research and development to build instructional materials and strategies to teach successfully in African language dominant classrooms.
The flagship work of the Nelson Mandela Institute across the past 10 years is known as the Magic Classroom Collective (MCC). The goal of the collective is to build effective tools and materials to transform the system at greater scale. The Magic Classroom Collective (MCC) brings together rural foundation phase teachers, teacher educators and researchers into a long-term working partnership. Placing the rural child at the centre, the goal of the MCC is to design and develop tools, materials, strategies and systems accountable to the teaching and learning context of the majority of South African poor schools. Currently the Magic Classroom Collective includes over 70 teachers serving over 2,100 children from Grade R to Grade 3 within 15 schools in the most rural areas of the Eastern Cape.
The work of the Magic Classroom Collective is intensive. For each school term, a complete set of teaching and learning material is produced for each classroom. Working with classroom based instructional coaches, teachers field test the materials and systems, and reflect on how they work in their classrooms.
Before, there was no reading in classrooms, now children read on their own. Before there was no writing in classrooms. Now children consider themselves authors. Before teachers did not enjoy their classrooms. Now teachers resist leaving their classrooms at the end of the day. Before working together, 90% of learners were scoring under 20% on assessments designed to measure literacy and mathematics learning. Children have improved their reading and writing by 3% year on year. Children have improved their mathematics by 4% year on year. These are the most consistent gains in literacy and mathematics amongst a cohort of rural poor schools in South Africa.
While we continue to work to build the Magic Classroom Collective into a network of demonstration schools, the NMI is working with government and a number of partners to bring the lessons and tools of the MCC to wider system scale.
The second priority of the Nelson Mandela Institute is to build a new pipeline of teachers, confident in teaching early grade literacy and mathematics in African language dominant classrooms into the future.
The field of African language based teaching and learning in the primary phase has been largely neglected. Student teachers are not provided with a good understanding of how children learn to speak and read in two languages in an African language dominant setting. The majority of teacher education is conducted through English, and does not model how to leverage African languages for purposes of teaching and learning.
Working with colleagues in the Faculty of Education at the University of Fort Hare, the Nelson Mandela Institute’s work is focused on designing and developing the first fully isiXhosa-English bilingual four-year Bachelor of Education serving foundation phase teachers. The first cohort of 150 students entered the programme in 2018. The Nelson Mandela Institute currently coordinates the programme for the Faculty, teaches the bilingual literacy modules, and supports students to engage in community literacy work to deepen their understanding of teaching and learning in practice.
The first cohort of students will graduate from the four-year programme at the end of 2021.
The international comparative assessment PIRLS (2017) pointed to the depth of the reading crisis facing African language speaking learners by Grade 4. Statisticians previously estimated that up to 60% of children were not learning to read with meaning by the end of Grade 4. The results of PIRLS were more consistent with our everyday observations that the vast majority of children in African language dominant settings are not learning to read by meaning by the end of Grade 3.
The results affirmed the organisational (and wider system) focus on the foundation phase – Grades R, 1, 2 and 3. At the same time, the results suggest that for some time into the future, the system will have to continue to remediate early literacy into the intermediate phase (Grades 4, 5 and 6.)
In response to a special request from the Eastern Cape Provincial Department of Education, the NMI launched a pilot programme to improve home language (isiXhosa) reading in the intermediate phase. Known as Chumani Nande KwisiXhosa, this programme of work focuses on 15 rural and peri-urban schools in the greater Qonce (King Williams Town) area. Across two years, the NMI will provide a minimal toolkit and targeted support to Grade 4, 5 and 6 home language literacy teachers. A literacy baseline was conducted in late 2018. The intervention aims to improve home language literacy in Grades 4, 5 and 6 across a limited two-year intervention.
Research suggests that in resource and text poor settings, a child’s relationship with reading relies on positive experiences with reading and writing both inside and outside of the classroom. Phemba Mfundi is a long-term programme of the Nelson Mandela Institute to design and test models supporting children to read and write outside of their classroom – before school, after school and during weekends. Phemba Mfundi roughly translates to children firing up education. The goal of the programme is to mobilise young people, in a variety of forms, to support children to read and write for enjoyment –
The initial programme had two motivations:
In this period, Phemba Mfundi was re-located closer to the University of Fort Hare, so that student teachers could participate in the programme. The programme currently focuses on supporting reading clubs in schools (after school and break times), and providing opportunities for small group work between education students and children in local schools. The work of children in the reading and writing clubs culminates in the publication of a anthology of writing launched during an annual community literacy week.
President Mandela would have turned 100 on the 18th of July, 2018. The moment inspired South Africa to think more carefully about his life, and how to bring the best of his legacy forward into the future. During this period there is a collective effort to elevate the work of his legacy organisations, including the Nelson Mandela Institute.
The vision for the next ten years is to build a legacy system of work capable of generating innovations into the future. Society is changing at a rapid pace. The very nature of basic schooling will develop and transform. The nature of inequalities will take new forms. The goal in this period is to build a system of work, and innovative young thinkers to drive it, to ensure that public education for children in Africa continues to innovate in ways that remain accountable to the lives of African children and their communities.
There are four keystones to the system. Like any keystone, each of these elements locks the system as a whole together.
Develop a new pipeline of teachers capable of quality teaching in early grade African language dominant classrooms.
Develop a new pipeline of teachers capable of quality teaching in early grade African language dominant classrooms.
Launch a new school, demonstrating the more far-reaching and humanising possibilities of African language based bilingual primary education. Based on both public funding and the raising of a private endowment, the goal is to launch the pre-Grade R class in 2022.
To undertake applied research, teacher development, and curriculum development to develop African language dominant primary schooling. To build partnerships with the Department of Basic Education to take innovations to wider system scale.