Developing learners’ writing skills is critical for academic success, especially in the South African context, where national assessments continue to highlight low literacy and language proficiency levels among Primary School learners. Writing is a cognitively demanding process that requires explicit instruction, scaffolding, and feedback at each stage of the writing process. This is especially the case during editing, which enables learners to refine and improve their work. However, in over-crowded, under-resourced classrooms where learners are often second-language English speakers, the editing stage, particularly peer editing, presents significant challenges for both teachers and learners. This qualitative case study explores how two Grade 6 teachers in South African primary schools approach the editing stage of the writing process during English Home Language lessons. Data were collected through lesson observations, learner documents, and teacher questionnaires and were analysed using content analysis.

Findings reveal that peer editing was inconsistently applied and largely ineffective due to learners’ limited academic and linguistic proficiency in both classrooms. Teachers often assumed the role of editor, resulting in overcorrection and exhaustion, with little improvement in learners’ final submissions. The study concludes that lack of teacher pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of the writing process and inadequate scaffolding during editing compromised writing development. Recommendations include reintegrating the revision phase into classroom practice, modelling peer editing explicitly, and focusing editing tasks on targeted language and genre features to support both learners and teachers.

Keywords: Writing process, editing, peer editing, teacher editing, pedagogical content knowledge, primary school.