A third of children entering school in South Africa cant recognize their own name. This is according to a study conducted by a global childrens charity organisation , Theirworld.
Two thousand educators across the world were surveyed for the study.
President of Theirworld, Justin van Fleet, says 38% of teachers in the country say children entering primary school are not developmentally ready when they start school.
What this means is that they are not able to perform basic age-appropriate tasks, whether that be washing their hands, going to the bathroom independently, recognising letters, basic words, or their own name. And a third of teachers said that children entering school in South Africa are worse off than children entering school a few years ago. When we tried to probe and figure out why teachers are seeing this on the first day of primary school. Many of them pointed to a lack of quality preschool and early childhood education, says Fleet.
