Promoting Literacy in South Africa's townships

2020 Analysis Report

Community Literacy Tutor Program

Sobambisana Primary School

This report covers the period 1 January to 30 November 2020 but focusses specifically on the quantitative outcomes of the internal evaluation of the progress of the 2020 Literacy Tutor cohort and the change in learner scores on the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), a standardised literacy assessment tool for South African learners.

Help2read Impact since Inception

Help2read is an educational English literacy development program that has been in operation since 2006, cumulatively reaching over 24 000 primary school learners in 400 schools with the assistance of thousands of volunteer reading helpers and township youth developed and trained as Literacy Tutors.  The focus is on supporting primary school learners who are not first language English speakers and who come from disadvantaged communities. Help2read supports children learning to read in Grades 2 through 4 so that they can read to learn thereafter. In 2020 the help2read English literacy intervention program was implemented at 32 public primary schools, providing 1 006 learners who have fallen behind with attention from a Volunteer Reading Helper or Literacy Tutor (LT).

Help2read’s response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Help2read, like any organisation that works in the school space was presented with a great deal of challenges in 2020. School closures in line with the national lockdowns issued by the South African government led to Help2read pivoting our offerings to the schools we work in. There were two major adjustments to the Help2read programme in 2020:

1. We were only able to conduct a limited number of one-on-one reading sessions. Consistent one-on-one reading is core to the support Help2read offers, findings from 2019 will be compared to the 2020 findings to examine the impact of one-on-one reading support as opposed to group reading support. The 2020 findings are based on a mix of limited one-on-one reading support and group reading support.
2. The continuous nature of the Help2read intervention was disrupted when schools were closed and access to learners was limited. Reading support was now offered in a physically distanced classroom reading sessions and other group reading sessions such as Reading Clubs and Holiday Clubs.

Impact of the help2read Training and Support: Literacy Tutors

The Western Cape Literacy Tutors (LTs) completed the same two-part questionnaire.

Part 1 of the questionnaire focussed on the following Personal Capabilities:

• Awareness of own strengths and weaknesses
• Receptiveness to learning
• Drive
• Confidence
• Resilience
• How informed they felt about the job market and career opportunities

Part 2 of the questionnaire was directed at the following Employability Skills:

• Verbal communication
• Written communication
• Teamwork
• Problem solving
• Organisational skills
• Numeracy

Links:

• Help2read website
• Help2read Instagram

• 2020 Analysis Report Community LT Programme (PDF)