Cover story
Before the tablet, the textbook
If we don’t lay the right foundations early in a child’s life, technology in our schools will only create further divides.
03 August 2026
Thirty-two years into democracy, the South African pupil is at the bottom of the class. The problem isn’t non-attendance; enrolment rates for children of compulsory school-going age were near universal (97.1%) in 2025. The problem is also not for want of money; the country’s expenditure on basic education is above average for middle-income countries, both as a percentage of GDP and per capita. The issue is one of execution, or as researchers at the Teacher Demographic Dividend Project at Stellenbosch University put it: “There are quality and efficiency issues in the system.”
South Africa was ranked last in the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, which is run every five years, and assesses reading comprehension and literacy trends for fourth-grade students globally. It shows that only 19% of South African Grade 4 children can read for meaning, in any language.
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