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LANGUAGE OF EDUCATION SENDS TEACHERS AND STUDENTS BACK TO THE BLACKBOARD Cameron Dugmore
The Cape Argus Online (www.iol.co.za) Less than 50% of children who start school will leave 12 years later with a matric certificate. Western Cape Education MEC Cameron Dugmore discusses ways to reverse the situation. I have identified literacy and numeracy as my number one priority. Systemic evaluations of learner performance over the past five years reveal that only 38% of Grade 3 learners are performing at levels required by the national curriculum. While this does not imply that only 38% can read and write, it is clear that the proper foundation is not being laid during the foundation phase. It is a matter of record that of the 80 000 learners who begin Grade 1 in our province, only 40 000 make it to matric. About 15% of these matrics then fail the matric year. It is this fundamental challenge that I and the Western Cape Education Department are seized with. We owe it to every child in our province and also to every parent, to give them the very best opportunity to succeed. This implies getting our language in education strategy right. Failure to do this, and also to ensure equity, redress and quality will simply be a betrayal. Various interventions have been made, but we have realised that a much more strengthened and sustainable strategy is required. At the heart of our approach must be the uncompromising pursuit of quality education in every school, especially the former House of Representatives (HOR) and Department of Education and Training (DET) schools in the Western Cape. National Education Minister Naledi Pandor has urged all provinces to focus on equity and redress, and the introduction of no-fee schools which will be rolled out over the next three years is evidence of this. The centrality of teachers and teacher development and the need for co-ordinated efforts by the government and our partners to tackle the social and economic issues which impact on learning are recognised. We have also realised that an integrated and co-ordinated approach to early childhood development (ECD) where learners from birth to five years are stimulated in resource-rich environments is a critical success factor. So too is the need to dramatically expand our provision of Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) to deal with the reality that over 160 000 parents in our province cannot read and write. I believe that the role of language in our literacy and numeracy drive is of critical importance. I visited a Grade R class in Mfuleni last year and discovered that a Xhosa speaking learner could count to 50 in English but could not count to 10 in his mother tongue. Despite our national policy, which requires three years of mother tongue-based bilingual education, the reality is that many of our Afrikaans and Xhosa speaking learners continue to be taught in English from Grade 1. For many of these teachers, English is also not their mother tongue. It is a matter of record that many Xhosa and Afrikaans parents place pressure on teachers and schools to have English from Grade 1, not just as a subject, but as the language of learning and teaching. In our province, the majority of our learners who write matric have an advantage in that the examination is available in Afrikaans and English. However Xhosa-speaking learners write their final exam in their second language. The 2004 report of the national quality assurance body, Umalusi, says: "It should be stressed that the success of teaching and learning English as a second language in further education can only happen when supported by adequate mother tongue instruction in the early grades. Learners who are taught to use their mother tongue well do not find the switch to a second language a problem." Researchers agree that mother-tongue education results in cognitive advantages for school learners, especially in the first years of primary education. The majority of studies also support the proposition that bilingual education affords children numerous cognitive advantages over monolingual children. Mother-tongue education also affirms children in their self worth and in their identity. Conversely, children who are submerged in education through their second language demonstrate loss of self-confidence and low self-esteem. Research also provides evidence that literacy transfers across languages. Learning to read in the mother-tongue makes learning to read and write in an additional language easier. Our national language in education policy of 1997 commits South Africa to additive bilingualism. This policy is currently being revised. Dr Heugh of the HSRC, has produced graphical models, based on the analysis of a large number of international studies, under a brief from Unesco. These show the anticipated scores of Grade 12 English for learners, based on when they swapped from mother-tongue learning. According to the studies there is little difference to detect in the performance of learners in Grades 1-3 between those who are learning in mother-tongue or a second language. All seem to do similarly well. The real difference comes in when the learners reach Grade 4 and encounter for the first time a far bigger volume of work and material which is more "content" based and not presented in a familiar story style. This data - taken from major studies across large samples - indicates clearly that learners who are learning through a second language enter a downward spiral from Grade 4 onwards. The South African National Curriculum Statement (NCS) recognises the importance of mother tongue instruction and states that:
In our province, I have initiated a Western Cape Language in Education Transformation Plan. We have taken this plan through the structures of the WCED and have also briefed Minister Pandor. The current review by Minister Pandor of the 1997 Language in Education Policy and her commitment to advance our indigenous languages have given our plan new focus. In essence there are two main thrusts to our plan. The first target will be that, wherever possible, learners should have mother-tongue instruction until the end of Grade 6. We have careful plans to make this happen properly and in stages. It can never just happen overnight. Secondly, we want to ensure that every learner has at least three years of a third language before the end of the GET band (Grade 9). We plan to make sure that all three of the languages of the province are given status. We're saying that no-one need stop using his or her language. We want to grow language pride - if others are learning my language then it helps me know that my language is also valued. My self-esteem grows. I agree fully with Minister Pandor when she argues that while language is a critical factor in our struggle for a numerate and literate society, teacher development is the critical factor. That is why in terms of our approach we say that solution number one is to develop and support our teachers. The world our learners are in is a new one. There's less reading and more TV. There's less talking and more TV. Our teachers weren't trained to deal with children quite like these. Our teachers weren't trained to teach in multilingual classrooms but there's been a huge migration of learners and that's what we're faced with. Our teachers were trained in another curriculum with another approach altogether. We have a new curriculum with a fundamentally different approach to teaching and learning. Our teachers have to have time out so they can stock up on new skills. And they need more than a quick workshop at the end of a long hard day. We have schools of different types - we have those that are basically monolingual; we have those that are basically dual or parallel medium; we have multi-grade rural schools; we have trilingual schools. It makes sense for us to group schools with similar profiles together for training. It also makes sense for us to provide long training courses. So we will concentrate on one category at a time, but know that we are going to work with all our schools in turn; step by step. We must put those plans into practice and slowly turn our schools around. We have to take on the huge task of telling our parents of the advantages of mother-tongue-based bilingual education. We have a number of habits that have developed in our country (and around the world for that matter) and we understand all the historical influences that have pushed us into this place. One habit is that people increasingly choose English as a medium, even when their home language is Afrikaans or Xhosa. We are making our children turn their backs on their own languages: we are practising what they call "subtractive bilingualism" - we are simply "giving up" our own languages for the "perceived" or "imagined" benefits of another one. We must remember that our country has a policy of additive bilingualism and the promotion of multilingualism. So the WCED plans to encourage firstly bilingualism - home language plus a very strong additional language (English will likely be either the first or the second one of these two). Secondly, we must encourage trilingualism. Thus we are going to need excellent teachers generally, excellent teachers in Afrikaans, Xhosa and clearly excellent teachers of English. In doing all of this we are going to need collective solutions. We need massive advocacy in our province working with parents, teachers and learners. What inspires and encourages me is the fact that in all our consultations with teacher unions, school governing body associations, learners, NGOs and CBOs, the Western Cape Language Committee and PANSALB, there is not only support but passion for our plan. The cultural historian, Raymond Williams, said it was only in a shared belief and insistence that there were practical alternatives that the balance of forces and chances began to alter. Once the inevitabilities are challenged, he says, we begin gathering our resources for a journey of hope. All too often in life we think we are the only ones left stuck with having to solve terrible problems. The WCED plans to do all it can to mobilise and train people to work in communities on issues of family literacy. Our Teaching Assistant project, with 510 people employed to give extra support in classrooms, might grow next year, so we add into their contracts that they get out and visit the families of their classes, help the adults learn to read. |