Gov't bows to mother tongue pressure
Pini Bothoko | Friday March 13, 2020 15:47
The Botswana Congress Party (BCP) for years has been the leading light on the introduction of mother tongue, calling on the government to make education more inclusive. They argued that an arrangement could be done through introducing mother tongue as the medium of instruction in primary school of communities where Setswana is a second language.
The issue was also President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s major campaign promise, stating that under his leadership government will embrace the use of mother tongue as the medium of instruction in local public primary schools. Consequently, MoBE has moved to introduce mother tongue in schools. For instance, MoBE’s Permanent Secretary Bridget John disclosed the new position on mother tongue while officiating at the seminar on the introduction of local languages in the school curricula that was held at the University of Botswana, Library Auditorium yesterday. John stated that the importance of embracing mother tongue as a medium of instruction in primary schools is an aspect of education that has been widely accepted by progressive nations and it has been proven that the intervention greatly improves learning in schools.
To be bring about the envisaged changes John said:
“As a Ministry we need to have formulated a language policy by November 2020 to facilitate the introduction of mother tongue in schools starting 2021/2022 financial year. There is a principle that states that when you teach children you start with what they know and what they know best is their own language,” John said.
She also stated that “globally educational policy reforms are as old as countries themselves, and central to these historic reforms has always been the need to improve human capital for enhanced socio-economic development”.
John said such reforms enrich social cohesion, democracy, human rights, and patriotism and continue to be a development priority in the current globalised world. She further stated that Botswana like developing countries has had its fair share of educational reforms at different times to serve different national priorities.
“We had the Education for Kagisano of 1977 which aimed to bring social cohesion and the harmonisation of a newly independent nation state. Education for Kagisano aimed at making education available to a much wider section of the population and to break away from the pre-independence education system that was a legacy of Botswana’s colonial history that restricted access to education to the privileged few,” she said.
John said the model for use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction emphasises that all children should be taught in their first language in the first years of learning to master the concepts and later on make transition into English. “This policy brings in equity of educational opportunities and may remove existing learning barriers. Education and Training Sector Strategic Plan (ETSSP) also recommended the development of a comprehensive language policy to guide the implementation of all languages, which can be taught in schools”, she said.
She said central to the endeavour was the introduction of mother tongue in the national curriculum. The current language policy for instruction in primary schools requires use of Setswana for the first four years of education and later a switch to English at standard 5.
“This created problems for non-Setswana speaking learners. The performance of learners over the past five years across the 10 regions of the Ministry indicates consistent low performance in the regions of Gantsi, Kgalagadi as indicated in the public review for education report (World Bank Group 2019). One may ask if the language barrier has anything to do with this,” She said.
John also disclosed that the change in government policy is due to the fact that for years the ministry has been faced with high number of school dropouts because children were taught in the language they don’t understand. Meanwhile doing the welcome remarks, UB’s acting Vice Chancellor, Wathokwa Nkomazana said scholars in and outside Botswana have advocated and cried hard for the introduction of all, if not more languages into the educational systems. Nkomazana said the introduction would give learners pride, self esteem and a sense of belonging to all citizens.