South Africa’s leading education experts have called on the Department of Basic Education (DBE), policy makers, parents and teachers to prioritise mother tongue education to ensure that all learners have an equal opportunity to thrive academically.
The online event held on 17 September was the third installment of the Constitutional Insights by Albie Sachs hosted in collaboration with the Daily Maverick and the Inclusive Society Institute (ISI) to examine the different issues affecting mother tongue education in South Africa.
Persistent challenges facing multilingual education and the barriers preventing effective implementation of progressive language policies were key issues that the panel sought to highlight and recommend solutions.
The privilege of mother tongue education
Multilingual education research specialist from the University of the Western Cape (UWC), Dr Robyn Tyler, highlighted the inequality in how mother tongue education is viewed in South Africa.
Choosing mother tongue education for white English and Afrikaans speakers is never a question, unlike their black African language speakers do not have the same privilege or luxury to just go through the basic education and higher education systems without having to choose which language is more important.
In a world where most countries are multilingual, South Africa should also shift its focus on bi or multilingual education, she recommends.
“The home language of all our children, whether that is English, needs to be foregrounded. Every child also needs a strong education system in English and that is why our recent policy shift in the DBE towards mother tongue based bilingual education is important.”
Policy versus practice
Despite having progressive language policies, South Africa lagged in the implementation of the policies.
For instance, the country adopted the internationally recognised language and education policy in 1997 that allows learners to study in their home language alongside another language.
However, Tyler explained that implementation has favoured language as a subject rather than as a medium of instruction.
“We see particularly in our elite or ex-model C schools, African languages have been featured as subjects, usually with very little time and resources attached to them.”
Facing a stark reality, the majority of African language-speaking children study their home language as a subject until matric, but the official language of learning and teaching switches to English as early as Grade 4 – a transition international research shows is far too early.
“In reality, what we know as well is that our classrooms are bi and multilingual. The teachers and the learners work with more than one language every day, but they do this orally. And it’s very illicit,” Tyler explained.
The ‘undercover’ practice makes learning possible but problems arise when learners must write exams and access learning materials that are only available in English, contributing significantly to the failure of the education system.
Deep-rooted beliefs and barriers
Professor from the University of Witswatersrand’s School of Governance, William Gumede said the political will and state capacity were among the critical missing elements in implementing multilingual education.
Resulting in South Africa’s highly celebrated Constitution becoming a shiny document that does not serve the education sector and other state institutions.
“I think we lost a really big opportunity in 1994 to use our multilingual society to great effect. So, what we should have done is to say, well, every person, every child that goes to school also takes on an additional language that becomes crucial,” said Gumede.
Panel moderator and Dean of Education at Stellenbosch University, Professor Mbulungeni Madiba added that over 78% of learners switch from home language to English in Grade 4 and that the lack of progress in implementing the language policy for the past 30 years had left him feeling pessimistic.
Parents, teachers and other stakeholders believing that English was superior to other languages also contributed to the language policy implementation, requiring an ideological barrier that is rooted in colonialism and apartheid.
Officially adopting code-switching and training teachers on the use of multiple languages in the classroom; first-year university students having an African language qualification; making multilingual competency compulsory across sectors, and adequately funding the recently adopted Mother Tongue Based Bilingual Education (MTBBE) could boost curriculum development and teacher training.