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Such and other findings seem to suggest that literacy teaching methods, followed by the majority of schools in their day-to-day practices, do not succeed in giving full effect to the good intentions and substantive content of existing curriculum policy, and may have seriously negative effects on the education of the majority of children who are from socio-economically disadvantaged communities. These methods often include a loosely-applied whole-language approach - which places emphasis on reading whole passages of meaningful and authentic text - and more lenient approaches to literacy development, in conjunction with communicative approaches to language teaching, which emphasise authentic communication where the purpose of using language is to interpret, express and negotiate meaning. Evidence is that the gap between middle-class children and previously advantaged communities, and those from more vulnerable communities, is increasing. A key challenge is to solve, efficiently and immediately, urgent problems related to literacy and language teaching. The literacy strategy for schools is embedded in the Department of Education's National Curriculum Statement (NCS), which supports a communicative and whole-language approach. It is based on the assumption that all children can and will be able to learn to read naturally. It can be argued, however, that an unnatural situation exists in South Africa and that this would require much more structured literacy development and language teaching approaches. These would also have to be imbedded in appropriate policy positions and the incumbent implementation strategies. Whole-language and communicative methodologies and theoretical approaches have emerged in countries with high levels of literacy. This means that people are surrounded by easily accessible printed materials. Children also have both a rich exposure to early literacy practices at home and to early childhood education. They arrive at primary school with early-literacy skills well developed. In South Africa, as the Limpopo Province study on pages 5 and 6 show, the majority of learners do not live in communities with high levels of literacy and printed materials are not readily available. Many primary-school children come from homes where the reading levels of parents or guardians are far too low for them even to begin to help these children to read or learn to read. Furthermore, although the NCS documentation refers to literacy teaching and development in loose ideological, ‘state of the art' terms, it does not explain the mechanics of literacy teaching which teachers are now expected to follow. Indeed, none of the current policy, curriculum or curriculum-support documents put those communicative and whole-language approaches to literacy into practice or explain exactly what it is that teachers need to do in the classroom in order to ensure that learners can read and write. 
The Limpopo Literacy Strategy, based on national policy at an overarching level, acknowledges international research and empirical evidence on bilingual education in multilingual contexts. As such it places emphasis on literacy in mother tongue, and the use of mother-tongue medium education for as long as possible, with the addition of at least one other language which would complement rather than replace the mother tongue. This approach or paradigm in language education is known as ‘additive bilingualism'. For the majority of learners in the South African education system, this has been interpreted as home language (mother tongue/L1) plus English. Provision is made for a variety of additive bilingual models and language maintenance programmes where fully-fledged bilingual models were impractical. Yet, from the outset there has been a discontinuity between the understandings of (additive) bilingual (multilingual) education in language in education policy and how it was set out in the details of NCS (specifically Curriculum 2005/C2005). Although it was not explicitly stated as such, C2005 was understood to encourage teachers, curriculum advisors, and provincial departments to apply mother-tongue literacy in the foundation phase, followed by a switch to English medium in Grade 4, one year earlier than under the old Department of Education and Training (DET) system prior to 1994. 
In C2005 there was no reference to reading, writing, phonics and handwriting, leading teachers to neglect these. A switch to a second-language medium as early as grade 4, means that the principle of additive bilingual education gave way to transitional bilingualism (a temporary, transient form of bilingual education in which the mother tongue is removed as a medium of instruction). For the most part, African language speaking children are currently provided with three years of mother-tongue education, followed by a switch to English medium in grade 4. However, we found that neither mother-tongue, nor first additional language (i.e. mainly English) teaching and learning, is mastered nearly optimally, if at all, in the case of the schools studied in the Limpopo Province. Best information seems to suggest that any switch should not occur before six to eight years of strong mother-tongue teaching accompanied by sound second-language teaching to facilitate solid concept formation. The recommendations in the Limpopo study emphasise that target setting, accountability, assessment, and monitoring and evaluation form key pillars for the strategic direction provided about the proposed actions for the next three to five years, mainly within existing provincial mandates, human resources and budgets, in the areas of literacy teaching pedagogy and materials, time management, teacher training, mentoring and staff development. Taking into account many delicate matters in terms of multi-lingual learning and teaching, the next step in the way forward seems to be along the route of additive bilingualism, whereby the mother-tongue is never sacrificed, but teaching and learning a second language is introduced equally competently, early and coherently, first at conversational and then soon at learning area level, and last as the language of learning and teaching. Children have, as cognitive psychology shows, an amazing knack for abstracting the rules of grammar of one or more languages between the ages of two and ten, given competent ‘displays' of mastery in all such languages. The key message from this extensive study seems to be that our country's millions of learners in some ways could take control of their own future. They would, though, need a lot of help from politicians, managers in government, the education department, various other stakeholders, and their broader communities. In essence, it is about learners - very early in their school careers - turning ‘learning to read' (and write) into ‘reading to learn' in sound and very constructive ways. Put differently, learners have to quickly and strongly master language, literacy and communication skills so that they can use these instruments optimally to unlock the rest of the knowledge required from them in future to obtain gainful employment and careers. Politicians will have to take vast volumes of sound theoretical and research information into policy that would speed up the process and increase the quality with which learners become literate. 
Education officials, at all levels of the system, and especially literacy and language teachers, have to raise the bar on furbishing learners with the skills, knowledge, understanding, attitudes and values that would be central to realise such an effort and dream. The community, including parents and caregivers, often against extreme challenges or the dearth of resources and opportunity, and low literacy levels and abject poverty, especially in remote rural areas, has to become able and powerful in fostering a love for reading and a reading culture among learners to ensure future opportunities for them.
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