The Salesian Institute Youth Projects Learn to Live School of Skills, introduced the Learn to Live Legacy Project into the school in late 2021. The Legacy Literacy Project aims to prioritise sensitivity to the relationships between literacy, and emotional and behavioural disorders prevalent in learners who are not proficient readers.

The purpose of the Literacy Project is to introduce a systematic synthetic phonics reading intervention methodology for implementation by all role players, to reduce the barriers to reading experienced by the learners. Many of the Learn to Live learners have not benefitted from formal reading instruction during their formative years of mainstream schooling, before being enrolled at the Learn to Live School.

The key objective of this programme was firstly to train staff to recognise and address the barriers to learning, ensuring that the staff implement appropriate reading intervention methodologies, and enable learners to become more confident readers and thereby increase their learning potential and success.

The scholastic reading assessments started in August 2021 and proved that learners enrolling at the school had very low reading scores. The staff embarked on their first training session in January 2022 with Roland Abrahams and Toni Sylvester, who are both Educational Psychologists and lecturers specialising in Education at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

The total number of learners that underwent the scholastic assessment, was 152 whilst 608 assessments were qualitatively assessed.  These included assessments in English Reading, Comprehension, Spelling and Essay Writing.

The Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS, 2011) of the Department of Basic Education of South Africa only provides guidelines on the teaching of reading content and not the pedagogy on reading intervention methodologies on how to support learners who experience barriers to reading. According to CAPS, all educators are expected to have a sound understanding of how to recognise and address barriers to learning.  While this is ideal in theory, it poses to be a major challenge in the daily practice of supporting learners who experience reading barriers.

Another objective was to implement a systematic phonics reading methodology which will raise the literacy standard of the school and empower the individual.  Parent involvement is key to the success of the programme, with parent workshops taking place with the aim to introduce them to the Literacy Project and how best they can support their children. Parents have spoken openly about their frustration at not having the skills to teach their children to read and the socio-economic challenges faced by the communities.

Of the 200 learners involved in the original reading groups, 63 learners were prioritised due to the critically low standard of literacy among the weakest students, needing urgent intervention. The school worked on an average of 4 indirect beneficiaries per student but ended with a  total of 252 indirect beneficiaries. 

The staff anticipated that learners would resist the reading intervention, particularly because they were placed into ability groups and were no longer taught together with their peers for the one hour of reading intervention. “We were however pleasantly surprised when learners not only embraced the programme but also commented that it was nice to do something different, as it is more practical and interactive in nature," said Mr Tony Austen, Principal of the Learn to Live School of Skills.

Further thoughts from the Head of Curriculum Development, Maxine Fraser were: “After months into the Project, we now have a better understanding of the needs that would make this programme more successful. This includes potentially hiring the services of a Foundation Phase teacher who would work more closely with teachers.  We believe that the programme would be more impactful if learners are taught one-on-one, but this is not always possible given our time-tabling constraints”.

The Legacy Literacy project is made possible through welcome funding received from Missioni Don Bosco (Turin), whilst retired teachers from NOAH Cape Town volunteer their services to assist learners with reading, an invaluable contribution.

For more information, please contact Frieda Pehlivan, Communications Manager, Salesian Institute Youth Projects.

Tel: 021-425 1450
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 www.salesianyouth.org

More about the Learn to Live School of Skills:

The Learn to Live School of Skills is one of the youth development programmes on offer at the Salesian Institute Youth Projects and caters for learners aged 14 to 18 from at-risk backgrounds.

The Learn to Live School offers an integrated approach for youth, who due to their socio-economic circumstances, cannot gain access to, or cope with mainstream schooling. Learn to Live School of Skills follows Project-Based Learning (PBL) the primary teaching and learning methodology. This teaching methodology allows the school to cater more effectively to the needs of our learners, as it aligns well with the expectation of the workplace.

The Learn to Live Programme is very much vocationally driven – our vision is to prepare and equip learners to function in the workplace and when they cannot be immediately placed in