Beyond Assessment: A Policy Review of PIRLS and Early Grade Reading Interventions in South Africa

The chronic reading difficulties that have been recorded in successive cycles of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) since 2006 in South Africa are one of the most serious and complex issues confronting the country's education system. The mean scores of Grade 4 learners in South Africa have generally been lower than the international mean score of 500 in each of the assessment cycles (2006, 2011, 2016 and 2021), with about 81% of learners in the 2021 cycle unable to read for meaning. This policy review paper critically discusses the progress South Africa has made regarding the outcomes of PIRLS, the design and implementation of the Early Grade Reading (EGR) interventions, policy gaps, and proposes evidence-based suggestions for policy system change. The Simple View of Reading (SVOR) and Vygotsky’s Socio-cultural Theory of Literacy provided the theoretical framework for literature review, and a qualitative document analysis, informed by Critical Policy Analysis (CPA), was used. This article contends that South Africa's reading problems are not only pedagogical, but structural, characterized the presence of structural inequalities, poor policy implementation, language policy tensions and inadequate teacher development. The review concludes that effective reading improvement will occur if we have a coherent, sustained, and equity-centred reform effort that is grounded in research and evidence, centres on instruction, and takes into account the socio-economic factors that influence literacy.