Abstract:
Two cycles of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)
were completed in South Africa in 2006 and 2011. In this article, we investigate
the qualities of high-performing reading literacy schools for optimal resource management and utilisation strategies for possible application to low-performing
schools. We do this against the background of reports on reading resource
shortages and inadequacies in the context of reading literacy learning from
both of the PIRLS main studies. This is done by comparing six case study
schools with varying contexts and performance levels. The findings from a
secondary analysis using the PIRLS 2006 data together with six case studies
using international reading benchmarks from PIRLS 2006 to depict performance
levels, confirmed that learners in low-performing schools from the study had
inadequate access to reading instruction resources. This appeared partly
attributable to inadequate funding and government provisioning; ineffective
resource management at school level and non-resourcefulness of teachers
at classroom level exacerbating reading resource inadequacies; as well as
ineffective utilisation of materials at these low-performing schools. The resource
management and utilisation strategies of high-performing case study schools
were found to be potential models for schools with inadequate strategies.
