African languages rollout hits snag

The Department of Basic Education’s African language for Grade 1 pupils plan won’t be realised for next year.

Cape Town - The Department of Basic Education’s plan to implement an African language for Grade 1 pupils across the country next year won’t be realised with some provinces, including the Western Cape, pointing out certain challenges.

In terms of the department’s incremental introduction of indigenous African languages plan, schools that previously offered only Afrikaans and English would be mandated to offer an African language from Grade 1 and to incrementally introduce it in the remaining grades until it was phased in at Grade 12 level in 2027.

In the Government Gazette on November 13, members of the public and other stakeholders were invited to make comments related to the plan by Friday.

Last year a pilot project was launched in Grade 1 classes at several schools across the country, including 10 in the Western Cape.

“The pilot has given us some good lessons about the issues we need to attend to when implementing the policy.

“We understand that some provinces will not be able to go ahead as planned but will join later as there is support for this policy,” said Department of Basic Education spokesman Elijah Mhlanga.

Asked if the department had the resources and teachers to implement the plan from next year, he said there were resources but teachers were not “available everywhere” to implement the policy.

According to the Western Cape Education Department, the pilot project was going well and would continue in the 10 schools that had volunteered to be part of it.

Education MEC Debbie Schäfer said the province supported the introduction of African language teaching, but said proper consultation and sufficient time and money was needed while teachers had to be trained and a proper curriculum developed.

She said the Department of Basic Education had “out of the blue” gazetted “a raft of legislation and policy at this late stage of the year, making it compulsory to implement an additional African language”, which means they would have to reschedule their timetables.

Schäfer questioned where the teachers would come from, who would pay for them and how they would be trained.

“In short, this is impossible to implement at this stage. A regulatory impact assessment needs to be done which includes the financial model. The minister (of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga) herself is well aware of the current financial difficulties all provinces find themselves in, and this is imposing yet another legislative obligation on departments without the funding to implement it.”

ilse.fredericks@inl.co.za

Cape Argus

* Use IOL’s Facebook and Twitter pages to comment on our stories. See links below.