South Africa consists of developed and developing contexts. This article reports on a study undertaken to determine the effect of a Perceptual--motor Intervention Programme in learning readiness of Grade R learners from deprived environments. Le Roux's Group Test for School Readiness was used as baseline assessments to establish the school readiness of Grade R learners from a deprived environment and to determine whether an effective intervention programme could rectify the shortcomings. The sample of the intervention group (n?=?21) and the control group (n?=?27) consisted of five to six-year-old learners. The experimental group (n?=?21) of a Grade R class in a quintile 1 school followed a 10-week perceptual-motor intervention programme, while another Grade R class from a quintile two school as control group was not exposed to perceptual--motor intervention. A mixed method was applied, within an interpretivistic research design. The outcomes of the research are as follows: the results of the school readiness test were analysed with an independent t-test before intervention, a dependent t-test on improvement over time and an ANCOVA controlling for pre-test scores on the post-test. The results showed improvement in the school readiness as the experimental group improved with 33.3% compared with 14.8% in the control group. The experimental group's standard deviation (SD) is 8.11 and control group's SD is 4.96. Qualitative information was obtained from interviews with teachers and observation at the schools. The research shows the benefit for young learners learning readiness if teachers focus on intensive intervention programmes to overcome backlogs of deprivation and that effective intervention programmes could rectify shortcomings before formal teaching in Grade 1 commences. Future research to follow up the outcomes of the intervention group as well as control group could lead to a longitudinal report on the effects of such an intervention programme. Future research could also focus on other aspects contributing to school readiness like social-emotional development of young learners.