By Jenny Taylor | Chairperson - Edu Fun
Edu Fun’s mission is to improve English literacy. We teach learners in grades 2 & 3 at Diepsloot Combined School (DCS) in the informal settlement of Diepsloot, South Africa as well as in other rural and township communities.
Our ultimate goal in Diepsloot is to empower 70 local youth to teach 3000 children to read in Diepsloot, South Africa on an annual basis. This requires a minimum of 10 youth to be placed at each of the 7 primary schools in Diepsloot and would mean that every Grade 2 and 3 learner in the whole of Diepsloot would be able to read for meaning by the time they reach Grade 4. This would build a good foundation for any future learning and would uplift the entire community and increase the chances of these children completing their Education.
Our 2024 Tutor Programme is well on its way with 13 tutors in total. We have 6 new tutors who have joined us this year and 7 tutors who are with us for their second or third year. These tutors have been working with 200 Grade 3 learners at Diepsloot Combined School from February to date and are about to start working with an additional 200 learners in Grade 2 at the same school.
It has been lovely to have our senior tutors play a leadership and mentoring role as they are working very nicely to ensure that this years' intake is able to replicate the programme at various sites as we have also rotated the group to ensure that everyone gets exposure to other schools such as Sefikeng Primary, another Township School as well as Sparrow Schools for children with Special Educational needs.
We will be starting Phono-Graphix at another School in Diepsloot on a small scale in May. The school is called “Primary School 3". We will be assessing all 250 Grade 2 learners but will then only be able to work with 50 of those learners on a weekly basis. Our current Diepsloot Combined tutors will go through to Primary School 3 every Wednesday for 2 hours, but it is hoped that we will raise enough money be able to recruit and train more local tutors to be able to replicate our full programme at this school soon. For every tutor we recruit, we are able to teach up to 40 more children to read at any given site during a year.
Since our last report we have evaluated our results from 2023 and are pleased to report that we have had a year-on-year improvement since we shifted our focus to working with local youth as opposed to relying 100% on Volunteers.
When the Grade 3s (class of 2023) started the Phono-Graphix programme, the average score achieved on the reading assessment was 48%. By the end of the programme, there was a 41% improvement where the final average score for the grade was 89%.
The two tables below show an extraordinary initial improvement in the results since the Tutor project was introduced towards the end of the Covid lockdowns in South Africa. Since the inception of the Tutor project one can see steady and consistent improvement during the programme over the last two years. (See results in image).
American dollars go a long way in South Africa and you can convert this vision into a reality for as little as $ 50 per child per year!
Our wish list for 2024
1) Sponsor one child to learn to read in 2024
2) Sponsor 1 local youth to attend a Phono-Graphix Course
3) Provide a bursary for a passionate Phono-Graphix Tutor to pursue a career in teaching while continuing to teach reading at Diepsloot Combined School. (Meet one of our current tutors hoping to pursue a career in education, in the images below)
4) Provide the above bursary as well as a year's allowance to enable the tutor to earn a living while studying and teaching 40 children to read in their local community. (Meet one of our current tutors hoping to pursue a career in education, in the images below)
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