Few would have been surprised by the result of a study, published in this newspaper on Tuesday, into the literacy levels of primary school children in the Eastern Cape.

The study, conducted by nonprofit education organisation Funda Wande, revealed, among other things, that almost half of grade 2 pupils in the province could not read a single word – and 52% of grade 1s could not identify the sound of even one letter. It also found 90% of grade 2 pupils could not answer an interpretive question about a passage they had read...