The Centre for Evaluation and Assessment (CEA) hosted the National Steering Committee for the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study of 2016 (PIRLS) in February.

Members of the Steering Committee comprise experts from universities, non-governmental organisations, foundations, parastatals and government departments in the fields of education, language, literacy and primary education.

Prof Sarah Howie (Director of CEA) opened the meeting and outlined the PIRLS status report and milestones for PIRLS 2016. Colleagues from the CEA gave presentations on different components of the study they were involved in.

Ms Celeste Combrinck from the CEA presented the feedback from the National Research Coordinators meeting that was held in Morocco in December 2016 while Ms Nelladee Palane and Ms Karen Roux presented the translation of instruments and preparation for data collection. Mr Gabriel Mokoena and Ms Celeste Combrinck gave an overview of the data collection process and the challenges thereof. A summary of the scoring process and observations were presented by Mrs Nelladee Palane and Mr Gabriel Mokoena while Mrs Karen Roux presented on the trend and cross-country reliability scoring processes. Mr Mishack Tshele presented on the summary of data capturing and processing. Ms Celeste Combrinck and Ms Nangamso Mtsatse presented the results of the PIRLS 2016 sub-study called ePIRLS concerning digital reading conducted in Gauteng.

The committee also had group discussions about the analysis and preliminary data, dissemination ideas and processes for the national press release that is due to coincide with the international press release in more than 40 countries in December 2017.