INCREMENTAL IMPLEMENTATION OF AFRICAN LANGUAGES (IIAL) IN ALL SOUTH AFRICAN SCHOOL Presentation to Portfolio Committee 11 June 2013

PRESENTATION OUTLINE 2. Legislative mandate 1. Purpose of the presentation 2. Legislative mandate Lessons learnt from provincial initiatives The rationale for promoting equitable use of languages 5. Assessment (ANA, PIRLS, NSC) 6. The Language Development Framework 7. What is IIAL?

PRESENTATION OUTLINE… 7. The objectives of the IIAL 8. Language selection for FAL 9. Implications for implementation of IIAL 10. Advocacy 11. Plan for consultation 12. Implementation plan

1. THE PURPOSE OF THE PRESENTATION To provide the Portfolio Committee with the rationale for, details of and system readiness for the Incremental Introduction of African Languages (IIAL) in all public schools.

2. LEGISLATIVE MANDATE The IIAL flows from the following legislative framework: SA Constitution, 1996 National Education Policy Act, Section 3(4)(m), 1996 - Language in Education Policy South African School Act, Section 6(1), 1996 - The Norms and Standards regarding language policy

2A. THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONSTITUTION The South African Constitution recognises languages as one of the seven founding provisions. Section 6 of the Constitution states the following (1) The official languages of the Republic are Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu. (2) Recognising the historically diminished use and status of the indigenous languages of our people, the state must take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of these languages.

2A. THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONSTITUTION... Section 29(2), under the Bill of Rights Everyone has the right to receive education in the official language or languages of their choice in public educational institutions where that education is reasonably practicable. In order to ensure the effective access to, and implementation of, this right, the state must consider all reasonable educational alternatives, including single medium institutions, taking into account- (a) equity; (b) practicability; and (c) the need to redress the results of past racially discriminatory laws and practices.

2B. THE NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY ACT The National Education Policy Act of 1996 provides for the advancement and protection of the fundamental rights of every person guaranteed in terms of Chapter 3 of the Constitution: It provides for every student to be instructed in the language of his or her choice where this is reasonably practicable It also provides for every person to use the language and participate in the cultural life of his or her choice within an education institution

2B. THE NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY ACT... Is made possible by the Language in Education Policy in terms of Section 3(4)(m) of the National Education Policy Act, 1996 (Act 27 of 1996) The Norms and Standards in LiEP are published in terms of Section 6(1) of the South African Schools Act, 1996. These policies proclaim the objective of providing a strong foundation for the protection and advancement of the country’s diverse cultures and languages

2C. LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION POLICY The LiEP compels the Department to promote multilingualism, to develop the official South African languages equitably, and to foster respect for all languages used in the country, including South African Sign Language The promotion of multilingualism and the protection of linguistic rights in the schooling system are constitutionally rooted in NEPA and is reflected in the Language in Education Policy (LiEP).

2C. THE AIMS OF THE LiEP to promote full participation in society and the economy through equitable and meaningful access to education; to pursue the language policy most supportive of general conceptual growth amongst learners, and hence to establish additive multilingualism as an approach to language in education; to promote and develop all the official languages; to support the teaching and learning of all other languages required by learners or used by communities in South Africa, including languages used for religious purposes, languages which are important for international trade and communication

2C. THE AIMS OF THE LiEP... to counter disadvantages resulting from different kinds of mismatches between home languages and languages of learning and teaching; to develop programmes for the redress of previously disadvantaged languages. To provide Alternative and Augmentative Communication facilitate communication for learners with limited or no speaking skills.

2C. THE AIMS OF THE LiEP... the promotion, fulfilment and development of the state's overarching language goals in school education in compliance with the Constitution, namely: the protection, promotion, fulfilment and extension of the individual's language rights and means of communication in education; and the facilitation of national and international communication through promotion of bi- or multilingualism through cost-efficient and effective mechanisms, to redress the neglect of the historically disadvantaged languages in school education.

3. LESSONS LEARNT FROM PROVINCIAL INITIATIVES Eastern Cape The province is piloting usage of IsiXhosa as LoLT in the Intermediate Phase in 74 schools. The are former Model C schools that are offering IsiXhosa as SAL in the Foundation Phase. The province has a plan to train isiXhosa language teachers to teach at FAL level – utilizing teachers already in the system. Western Cape In 2006 the province piloted usage of IsiXhosa as LoLT in the Intermediate Phase. The province can train IsiXhosa teachers to teach at FAL level – utilizing teachers already in the system. North West Since 2003 the province introduced Setswana incrementally. It was mainly done at SAL level. They will have to switch to FAL.

3. LESSONS LEARNT FROM PROVINCIAL INITIATIVES Limpopo In 2006 the province encouraged former Model C schools to offer African languages at Home Language or First Additional Language level. The province provided schools with African languages teachers. They are going to utilize teachers already in school staff establishment for the compulsory learning of African languages by all learners. Mpuma langa Schools initiated offering of an African language as a additional subject at FAL level. Learners are given a choice of writing the examination or not.

4. THE RATIONALE FOR PROMOTING EQUITABLE USE OF LANGUAGES The analysis of the ANA results have indicated that even in those schools where a learner is not being taught in his home language, that learner is able to access learning using his home language but not proficiently. Currently many schools are still not affording learners the opportunity to learn an African language, not fulfilling the Constitutional mandate. If African languages are not shown to have utility for teaching and learning, these languages will be lost – together with its culture and heritage

4. THE RATIONALE FOR PROMOTING EQUITABLE USE OF LANGUAGES ... Poor learning outcomes in South Africa are in the main as a result of poor language proficiency and utility. The results of ANA, PIRLS, TIMSS, SAQMEC and the NSC have confirmed this on various occasions. Very little or nothing has been done by institutions, broader civil society or the sector to address this perennial problem. The time has now come to comprehensively deal with this challenge through the implementation of the Language Development Framework.

ASSESSMENT EXAMPLES

ANA - HOME LANGUAGES- GRADE 3 Specific skills/knowledge/competencies assessed What misconceptions were found? Writing rewrite a given sentence correctly using the correct punctuation recognise a question and use a question mark use an apostrophe to show possession use a capital letter to start a sentence Learners did not understand the instruction and the use of the word “rewrite” and “punctuate”.

PREPIRLS 2011 PERFORMANCE BY TEST LANGUAGE International Centre point prePIRLS tested children in all 11 languages The children were selected to write the test in the language that schools offered the children as the language of learning and teaching in grades 1-3. Therefore, children did not necessarily write the test in their home language, but rather the language that they had been taught to read in for Grades 1-3. In this presentation, I will make a distinction between the test language and the home language. In this graph, we see the Grade 4 learners performance in prePIRLS compared to the international centre point (the red line). The following observations are made: Only two language groups performed above the international centre point –Afrikaans and English. The learners tested in English achieved the highest scores. The highest performing African language group was siSwati, followed by isiZulu. The lowest performing learners were tested in Sepedi and in Tshivenda and fall 135-142 points below the highest group of learners.

prePIRLS 2011 Performance for Learners Writing in the Same or Different Language to their Home Language In terms of how the learners performed: Overall, children writing in their home language performed better. However, no difference was found for learners tested in isiNdebele and Sepedi. The lowest performing group were learners tested in Tshivenda who did not write the test in their home language and achieved 20 points fewer than second language learners in Xitsonga. Home language learners in siSwati and isiZulu achieved the highest scores in the African languages. The largest difference in scores (80 points) was found amongst the learners tested in English. The second language English learners still achieved 53 points above their peers in siSwati.

PIRLS 2011 PERFORMANCE COMPARED TO REFERENCE COUNTRIES We are looked at our Grade 5 learners performance in comparison to the other participants in the main study: At this stage we fall 150 points below the top performing countries. Our grade 5 learners in Afrikaans and English are comparable to those Grade 4 learners from Indonesia and Qatar and Grade 6 learners from Botswana. They achieve higher scores than Grade 4 learners from Oman and Morocco.

PIRLS 2011 OVERALL RESULTS South Africa is considered a benchmark participant in PIRLS 2011. This is because we did not test all languages but only 2 languages as explained earlier. Therefore we cannot strictly compare ourselves to other countries or systems but we can merely get an indication of how learners tested in Afrikaans and English fared. Children tested in Afrikaans and English performed well below the international centre point – indicated by the red line. In terms of comparability, they achieved similar results to grade 4 learners from Abu Dhabi, Grade 6 learners from Morocco, Kuwait and Botswana. However, they were well below the other benchmarking participants from the USA, Canada, Spain, Dubai.

NSC LANGUAGE PERFORMANCE Paper 1 Q1 Comprehension Q2 Summary Q3 Analysing and advertisement Q4 Analysing a cartoon Q5 Language and editing skills

Paper 2 Q1To Kill a Mockingbird (Essay) Q2 To Kill a Mockingbird (Contextual) Q3 Lord of the Flies (Essay) Q4 Lord of the Flies (Contextual Q5 A Grain of Wheat (Essay) Q6 A Grain of Wheat (Contextual) Q7 Romeo and Juliet (Essay) Q8 Romeo and Juliet (Contextual) Q9 Nothing but the Truth (Essay) Q10 Nothing but the Truth (Contextual) Q11 The Coffee-cart Girl (Essay) Q12 Relatives (Contextual) Q13 On his blindness (Contextual) Q14 The Serf (Contextual) Q15 Auto Wreck (Contextual) Q16 Cheetah (Contextual

Paper 3 Q1 Essay Q2 Longer transitional text Q3 Shorter text

5. LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK Project to prepare for Progress EFAL Introduced in 2012 in Grade 1 and in 2013 in Grade2 IIAL Consultation at different fora; Advocacy through discussions and presentations; lessons from provincial initiatives; draft policy; basic LTSM in place; implementation plan in place SA Sign Language Curriculum completed in 2012; piloting in GP and Ec in 2013 to prepare for full implementation in 2014 English across the curriculum Concept document developed. Working with provinces to prepare for implementation in 2014.

6. WHAT IS IIAL? Promoting the development and increased utility of African languages by introducing learners incrementally to learning an African language from Grade R to 12; It aims to strengthen the use of African languages at Home Language level, and so increase use of those languages for academic purposes, as well as ensure that all non-African language speakers speak an African Language.

7. THE OBJECTIVES OF IIAL To improve proficiency in and utility of the previously marginalised African languages (at First Additional Language level); raise confidence of parents to choose their own languages as languages for learning and teaching; To increase access to languages by all learners, beyond English and Afrikaans; To promote social cohesion and expand opportunities for the development of African languages as a significant part of preserving heritage and cultures.

8. LANGUAGE SELECTION FOR FAL 1 Xitsonga 2 *Nguni languages IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, IsiNdebele and Siswati 3 *Sotho languages Sepedi, Setswana and Sesotho 4 Tshivenda 5 Afrikaans All learners are compelled to offer English – as FAL or HL All learners will be compelled to offer a second FAL, which should be an African language from the above provision *The terms “Nguni” and “Sotho” are used solely for the purpose of this presentation

9. THE IMPLICATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF IIAL Areas that have implications Responsibility Timeframe Progress Time allocation Branch T Sept 2013 Meeting with the relevant stakeholders regarding extension of school contact time Discussion with the ELRC Post provisioning model Jan 2014 Provinces were requested to work at post provisioning models to accommodate IIAL Orientation of teachers to teach African languages at FAL level Oct 2013 FP CAPS orientation took place in 2011. EFAL training on teaching methodologies took place in 2011. LTSM – primary teaching and learning support materials – workbooks and textbooks Branch C Currently available April 2014 FAL Workbooks are available for all languages – Grade 1. National Catalogue of textbooks developed for Grades 1-12 The Grade R resource kit is available to support the teaching of languages. Exemplar ANA items for drill-and-practice have been developed for distribution. Special call for submission from publishers– FAL readers and textbooks in African languages. Initial teacher training HEIs Ongoing Funza Lushaka Bursary targets FP and African languages teachers. UKZN has made isiZulu a compulsory subject for all under-graduate students Financial implications Branch P & C The branch is putting in a bid to National Treasury for funding the IIAL.

10. ADVOCACY The Minister and the MECs should take the lead An aggressive advocacy campaign targeting parents and learners is being finalized and aims at: Promoting the use of Home Languages in the early grades, Promoting workbooks to support the teaching of African languages, and Promoting the use of African languages in the early grades - developing learner’s competence in English at the same time

11. PLAN FOR CONSULTATION Stakeholder Groupings Progress HEDCOM Consultation done; Policy endorsed and recommended to CEM for approval CEM Approved further consultation NCF and SAPA Presentations made and discussions are ongoing Broader public and civil society Draft policy will be released for public comment Organized Labour (HEDCOM Sub-Committee) Presentation made and discussions Education Portfolio Committee Presentation on 11 June 2013

12. IMPLEMENTATION PLAN FOR THE POLICY 2014: Grades R and 1 2015: Grade 2 2016: Grade 3 2017: Grade 4 2018: Grade 5 2019: Grade 6 2020: Grade 7 2021: Grade 8 2022: Grade 9 2023: Grade 10 2024: Grade 11 2025: Grade 12

WHO CAN DOUBT THE IMPORTANCE OF ONE’S OWN LANGUAGE ? “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” - Nelson Mandela

THANK YOU