The introduction of the Annual National Assessments (ANA) 2010 in South Africa offers an
opportunity to identify strengths and weaknesses in teaching and learning literacy and
numeracy in the early years of schooling. The purpose of this study was to analyse the ANA
mathematics results for Grades 1 to 6, in the province of KwaZulu-Natal for 2010, with the
intention of identifying broad trends in the results. The results reveal that the performance of
learners was much poorer in the higher grades than in the lower grades with 78% of Grade 1
learners obtaining 50% or higher in the test while the corresponding percentage for Grade 6
was 12%. The disparities in performance per quintile prevalent in the Grade 12 examinations
results are also evident at the primary level as indicated by these ANA results. An interesting
finding is that for the small subgroup of learners whose home language is Afrikaans, their
performance was highest across all the grades. The set up of the ANA is seen as a first step in
providing information about the learning of numeracy and literacy at the beginning of the
learners’ schooling and it is hoped that this leads to better planning and improvements across
the various levels of schooling.