NPC ADVISORY: BASIC EDUCATION PRIORITIES FOR THE MTDP, 2024-29 IMPROVING PLANNING TO IMPROVE LITERACY AND NUMERACY

This advisory provides the rationale and evidence for the recommendations1 made on Basic Education in the NPC’s Medium Term Development Plan (MTDP) in which the NPC proposed that a focus on planning to improve literacy2 and numeracy together with the actions that are pre-requisites for creating the necessary conditions to achieve this. This includes a deliberative focus on addressing inequities of resourcing that impact on performance and doing so within a rigorous planning framework so that the system achieves greater efficiencies, improved quality and more equitable outcomes. Improving literacy and numeracy from the foundation years would significantly accelerate progress by addressing the systemic inefficiencies of failure and repetition and in the multiple long-term personal and systemic consequences of poor foundations on subsequent performance, and retention. A 2019 paper3 estimates the annual cost of failure and repetition in the South African system to be R20bn. Improving learner performance in early grade reading and maths would minimise both early grade and subsequent failure and repetition4. Evidence-informed planning is needed nationally and provincially that is aligned with resourcing across clear timeframes, which monitors and reports on both implementation and progress against agreed indicators, and which informs timeous corrective action5. 1.