When reading fails: A crisis in schools that we can't ignore

Half of Grade Six learners cannot read and comprehend a Grade Three English storybook. This should alarm and indeed shock everyone in the education sector. This is not merely bad news; it is a sobering signal that something fundamental is not working as it should. Literacy is the foundation upon which all other learning rests. When that foundation is weak, the entire structure of education becomes unstable.

Every once in a while, a statistic emerges that should make a nation pause, fall silent, and look at itself in the mirror. I believe we are at such a moment. Recent research findings by Usawa Agenda have unmasked a truth we have long avoided confronting. The Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (Flana 2025), released by the organisation’s Executive Director, Dr Emmanuel Manyasi, reveals a deeply disturbing reality.

These are not abstract numbers. These are children sitting in our classrooms—future workers, leaders, innovators, and citizens of this country. If a learner reaches Grade Six without the ability to read and understand a Grade Three text, then we must ask ourselves a hard question: what exactly has been happening in our classrooms at the foundational level? I will return to where the problem lies shortly.

But first, let us be clear about the philosophical basis of my argument. Literacy is not just another school outcome; it is the doorway to all learning. When reading collapses, every other subject limps. Science becomes guesswork. Mathematics becomes mechanical. Social studies become memorisation without meaning. Language is the tool through which knowledge is accessed, processed, questioned, and applied. At the moment, this tool is blunt, and the entire system is underperforming as a result.

For me, this report should be treated as a national wake-up call, not a technical document to be shelved after a press conference. We must resist the temptation to apportion blame hastily. It is easy to blame teachers, policy, curriculum, parents, technology, or even the children themselves. But it accumulates slowly through the neglect of reading culture, inadequate exposure to books, exam-driven teaching, overcrowded classrooms, limited access to appropriate reading materials, and the gradual disappearance of structured reading programmes in schools. That is where we must begin.

In my workshops, I emphasised the urgent need for extensive reading programmes in our schools. My initial concern was with secondary schools, where I discovered that many institutions no longer run structured extensive reading initiatives. But if Grade Six learners are struggling with Grade Three texts, then the point of intervention must move even lower—to primary schools, and indeed to the earliest grades. We must go back to basics.

Backbone

Extensive reading is not a luxury. It is not an optional enrichment activity. It is the backbone of literacy development. Children learn to read by reading widely, regularly, and enjoyably. Not only textbooks. Not only examination passages. They must read stories, short books, graded readers, folktales, biographies, science readers, and age-appropriate informational texts.

This requires deliberate investment. Schools must be supported to build classroom and school libraries. Reading materials should be varied, culturally relevant, and level-appropriate. Local-language materials should be included alongside English and Kiswahili resources, because early literacy develops best when rooted in familiar linguistic environments.

But books alone are not enough. Every teacher, not just language teachers, must see themselves as teachers of reading. A science teacher guiding learners through a passage is teaching reading. A history teacher helping learners interpret a text is teaching reading. A mathematics teacher explaining a word problem is teaching reading. Literacy is cross-curricular; it cannot be outsourced to one department.

We must also restore reading time. Yes. We have to protect, structure, and supervise reading time within the school timetable. When everything is urgent, reading quietly disappears. Yet it is the one practice that makes all other learning possible. I was particularly disturbed when a teacher told me the other day that learning had not started in Grade Ten because course books had not been supplied to schools. What is happening to our teachers’ creativity? Why not put learners in a reading programme for two weeks of reading and reviewing books if you have a modest library?

A nation that does not read eventually loses the ability to think deeply, argue clearly, innovate responsibly, and govern wisely. Literacy is not merely an education issue; it is a development issue, a democracy issue, and a cultural survival issue.

The Flana 2025 findings should not depress us; they should mobilise us. They have told us where we are—and, crucially, where we must act. The journey back begins with a simple but powerful act: put a book in a child’s hands, and make sure they read it.