18 Results Are Tagged With "South Africa"

Most children in South Africa are not ‘school ready’ by the time they start primary school and spend their entire school experience playing catch-up.  Unfortunately, few manage to catch up.  A recent USAID study of randomly-sampled first graders in two South African provinces found 98% to be “at risk for reading difficulties” by the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) benchmark. Beyond first grade, young South Africans continue to score poorly on international reading and math tests at every level. A major challenge is that key caregivers of very young children (i.e., preschool teachers and mothers) are largely unaware of the depth of the school readiness problem.  This is due to (i) the labor-intensive nature of assessing preschoolers: very young children can neither read nor respond in writing, and (ii) the high costs and scarce availability of specialized assessment instruments like the aforementioned DIBELS.