Pretoria – The Department of Basic Education has announced that all schools will now offer an African language to all learners from Grades R to 9.
The department says it is preparing for the implementation of African languages in 2014 by phasing it in this year already in selected schools in each province.
Based on this exercise, provinces will determine what is required for full scale implementation in 2014.
All provinces, through their Heads of Education, have committed to ensuring that African languages are implemented incrementally and effectively.
The implementation of African languages requires that all learners exit at Grade 9 level having learnt an African language for at least one phase.
It is perceived that African languages do not enjoy the same development and utility as English and Afrikaans. The department will therefore ensure that all African languages are equally developed and used by learners in the best interest of their learning and performance in their 12 years of schooling.
“All schools that do not have an African language as a language in their school language policy at all, will introduce incrementally from 2014 in Grade R and 1, the learning of an African language as another first additional language,” the department said.
In schools, where learners are doing one African language and either English or Afrikaans, learners will learn another African language in Grade R and 1 in 2014.
“We have the necessary resources to do this in the workbooks developed by the department for languages. These have proven to be effective teaching and learning materials, and teachers are using them as core classroom materials,” the department said.
This will promote multilingualism, as envisioned by the Constitution and Language in Education Policy (LiEP). The LiEP promotes additive multilingualism, which means that learners come to school knowing their mother-tongue and are taught other languages incrementally across the different grades in school.
One of the major challenges in implementing what LiEP requires, in terms of additive multilingualism, is that School Governing Bodies (SGBs) will select the language policy of the school.
This means that SGBs decide on language offerings for the school, based on the demographics of the learners in the schools.
“Our own research shows us that language selection does not promote the African languages of the learner body in many schools. They are forced to learn English and Afrikaans instead. For our learners, who do not speak an African language, many are still leaving the schooling system having never been taught an African language.
“This must have huge implications for the constitutional and social goal of promoting social cohesion and nation building in all our citizens,” the department said. – SAnews.gov.za
