What a month to be a youth in South Africa. The past few weeks have forced us to look into the state of our future generation with one gloomy report after another painting a bleak picture of young people in our country.
First, the Statistics South Africa’s (Stats SA) quarterly labour force survey (QLFS) for the first quarter of this year reaffirmed previous reports that the youngest and strongest among our population are unemployed.
The youth recorded the highest unemployment rate of 62.1% for those aged 15 to 24 and 40.7% for the 25-34 age group. Even more disheartening is that 3.7 million young people aged 15-24 years – out of 10.2 million – were not in employment, education or training.
On the same day that Stats SA released the QLFS figures, another report hit us with a debilitating jab about our children – some of whom will be counted as part of the unemployment stats in a few years.
The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) 2021 report, a literacy benchmarking assessment involving 57 countries, ranked South Africa at the bottom of the lot with 81% of our grade 4 pupils unable to read for meaning in any of the 11 official
languages.
Just last week, another report by the United Nation’s Children’s agency, Unicef in association with the department of basic education, revealed that 43% of households with young children in South Africa have no books and only 16% of homes have more than five books. Interestingly, as part of the Pirls assessment the home environment is taken into consideration. The Pirls study also underscores the strong correlation between pupils’ socio-economic environment and their educational achievement.
The Pirls study considers the education level of the parents, the highest occupation level of the parents, the number of books in the home and the number of children’s books in the house. A pupil whose home has less than 10 books forms part of the lowest category in the lower socio-economic status.
With 43% of homes having no books at all in South Africa, we have a long way to go before our literacy levels come even close to the Pirls international benchmark of 400, let alone the Pirls scale centre-point of 500. In the current report our grade 4 are scored 288, while grade 6 achieved 384.
As we mark Youth Month, may we remember that we need to invest more resources in our community libraries so that children have access to books.
We need to make sure that our schools have stacked libraries to encourage children to experience the joy that comes with being able to read for meaning. We need all those who are entrusted with the money to provide school infrastructure that is conducive for learning to do so. May this Youth Month be a reminder of how bleak the future of our youth looks if we do not do something about it.
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