Investigating Grade 5 English reading comprehension proficiency and reading instruction: A case study

Abstract

Reading comprehension remains a critical concern in South Africa, with many learners failing to acquire age-appropriate literacy skills in the early school years. The continued poor results in national and international testing, especially the Progress in International Reading Literacy Studies (PIRLS), highlight the systemic nature of this challenge. PIRLS 2021 found that 81% of South African Grade 4 learners could not read for meaning in any language, failing to reach the lowest international benchmark for reading comprehension. This points to a foundational literacy crisis with long-term consequences for learners' academic progress. The current study investigated the reading-comprehension achievement of Grade 5 learners. It examined the instructional and environmental factors which influenced the development of literacy in both public and private schools at Dr Kenneth Kaunda District, in the North-West Province of South Africa. A convergent mixed-methods case study approach was used to examine variations between English Home Language (HL) teaching in private schools and English FAL teaching in public schools. The quantitative data were collected using two PIRLS 2021 reading passages (informational and literary) and the Classroom Literacy Environment Profile (CLEP) checklist to assess literacy richness in classrooms with 85 Grade 5 learners. Qualitative data was gathered using semi-structured interviews and classroom observations with four Grade 5 English teachers. The results indicated that most of the learners had simple decoding and retention ability, and struggled with higher-order comprehending accomplishment, e.g., inference, integrating and evaluating, especially in Test 2, which was the literature test. The performance of learners in the private HL schools was higher compared to public FAL schools, although the difference between several categories of classroom environment was not statistically significant, which shows that the general foundational literacy offers converge. The research clarifies that the convergence of mind processes influences the development of reading comprehension, the instructional methods and classroom setting, optimal language of teaching and the learner involvement. The availability of resources alone was not sufficient to account for differences in reading comprehension outcomes. Instead, the findings point to the importance of systematic instruction that explicitly addresses the reading comprehension processes assessed in the study, together with consistent opportunities for learners to engage with literacy activities. These findings have implications for teacher professional development, assessment of literacy, and equitable literacy provision in multilingual and resource constrained educational contexts. The observed differences in structured literacy engagement, classroom environments, and technological resources further suggest variation in the organization and enrichment of classroom literacy environments. Therefore, schools should prioritize ongoing teacher development in reading comprehension instruction strategies and ensure that available literacy resources are used purposefully to provide learners with regular opportunities to engage with texts.