SA’s reading crisis: Why this province’s pupils fall off literacy cliff by Grade 3
KwaZulu-Natal, however, has a better literacy story to tell: it starts with a low Grade 1 score but more than doubles it by Grade 3.
The Department of Basic Education released the landmark Funda Uphumelele National Survey (FUNS) findings in Pretoria in late 2025, exposing a worrying reality where Limpopo pupils are failing to build on early reading foundations.
While 31% of Grade 1 learners in the province meet home language benchmarks, this number plummets to just 19% by the end of Grade 3.
Limpopo literacy: The rote learning trap
This literacy cliff highlights a fundamental gap in how children are taught to read in the province. In Grade 1, the literacy benchmark focuses on letter-sound recognition, which is considered a “constrained skill”. Because this skill can be mastered through rote learning and repetition, many pupils appear to be on track early on without actually understanding how to decode text.
By Grade 3, the metric shifts to Oral Reading Fluency (ORF), which requires learners to read connected sentences accurately and at a specific pace. Many Limpopo pupils who passed their Grade 1 tests simply cannot make the leap to fluent reading. Without this fluency, comprehension becomes impossible, as the child spends all their “working memory” just trying to sound out individual words.
Language and poverty play a role
Limpopo’s literacy results are also heavily impacted by socio-economic factors and language-specific challenges. Sepedi, the province’s most prevalent home language, has the lowest national Grade 3 benchmark attainment at just 11%. Shockingly, 25% of Grade 3 learners in Sepedi and Xitsonga -languages dominant in Limpopo – cannot read a single word correctly.
Data shows these learners are typically drawn from the least affluent school quintiles in South Africa. Learners in wealthy Quintile 5 schools are almost three times more likely to reach literacy benchmarks than those in the poorest Quintile 1 schools.
How Limpopo compares to other provinces
While Limpopo’s results decline, other provinces show that improvement is possible. KwaZulu-Natal, for instance, starts with a lower Grade 1 score of 18% but manages to more than double that to 40% by Grade 3. Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube has warned that literacy is the only way to unlock future economic opportunities for these learners.
Provincial Literacy Benchmarks: Grade 1 vs Grade 3
| Province | Grade 1 HL Benchmark | Grade 3 HL Benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| Limpopo | 31% | 19% |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 18% | 40% |
| Western Cape | 54% | 43% |
| Eastern Cape | 37% | 22% |
| National Average | 31% | 31% |
Source: 2025 Funda Uphumelele National Survey