Years ago I remember sticking NUSAS stickers on ATM machines which read “Republic Day – no cause to celebrate”. This week is Adult Learners’ Week and September the 8th is International Literacy Day. The question that springs to mind is: Is there cause to celebrate? Officially 781 million adults are illiterate in the world, most of them women. In reality this figure is much higher as even more adults are unable to read or write well enough to function effectively in society.

Yet literacy is a fundamental human right and a right that enables people to access and secure many other rights.

As with so many issues in modern South Africa, the glass can be either half full or half empty depending on your vantage point. Certainly the democratic South Africa has made great strides in formalizing an adult curriculum, the National Department of Education (nDoE) and the Independent Examinations Board set relevant adult exams, and many of the SETAs fund ABET programmes generously. On the down side, one has also seen a virtual decimation of the non profit sector work in this field. ECD and ABET were darlings of the international donor community during the apartheid era. Millions of donor Rands saw a flourishing of strong and mostly effective civil society interventions in these two important areas. This generous funding came to an end dramatically quickly. Most NGOs closed (TELL, ELP, Wits Workers School, Learn and Teach, NASA, ECALP, USWE to name a few). CBOs that depended on these NGOs for funding and for training were badly affected to. What was left as a legacy was a collection of world class materials.

This left the State as by far the largest provider of ABET in the country. The education department in each province runs Public Adult Learning Centres (the old night schools with a new name) with varying degrees of success. Challenges include the fact that educators at these PALCs are not full employees but are hourly paid. Levels of commitment of educators vary widely. Classes generally happen at night which often makes it difficult for female learners to attend. Most learners are “second chance matriculants” doing formal school subjects. The one province where this is noticeably different is the Western Cape as this province funds CBOs and church initiatives to deliver.

More classic ABET is probably better undertaken by the Department of Correctional Services which runs a massive programme in most prisons. The Department of Labour has also been a major sponsor of large programmes though the National Skills Fund and through the setting of targets for each SETA. What the past couple of years have shown quite clearly is that the new curriculum is too much like school. Adult learners who study part time will take far too long to achieve a GETC. In most cases the curriculum has failed those who see ABET as a stepping stone into learnerships and ultimately the world of work.

Currently various initiatives driven by SAQA, the nDoE, UMALUSI and the Department of Labour are looking at how we can make the curriculum neater, tighter and more fit for purpose. A lasting challenge is the meager budget allocated to ABET nationally and in each province.  

The major cause to celebrate is the manner in which the national Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, has slowly but surely pushed on with a national literacy campaign. She appointed a Ministerial Task team which included civil servants, academics and civil society. This team visited Cuba, Venezuela and New Zealand to look at various adaptations of the famous Cuban model. Recommendations were made to cabinet and from the next financial year billions of Rand have been approved over a five year period to “eradicate” illiteracy.

The campaign will focus entirely on those who cannot read or write at all (about 4 million people). Using volunteer educators who are paid a stipend, learning groups will be formed in every village in the country. This will be the first real injection of real money into a campaign with political backing. A worrying aspect of this initiative is whether or not it will make use of those skills which still exist in civil society organizations through teacher training and materials development. The position of CEO is yet to be advertised and it is not yet clear whether or not the campaign will fall within a line function in the ministry, or if it will be an autonomous entity outside of government.

Literacy Day and Adult Learners’ Week makes us focus on the importance of literacy and numeracy skills to further grow our economy to create employment and empower especially poor and vulnerable people to access rights. Minister Kadar Asmal once said that the Bill of Rights is like a rope of sand to the illiterate.   Hopefully the new campaign will change that bleak picture. 

To conclude; YES we do have cause to celebrate, but we have so much work to do. In my view the cruelest legacy of apartheid was the lack of education and the poor quality of education offered to the black majority. 

– Andrew Miller is the Chief Executive Officer of Project Literacy.