South Africa expands mother-tongue education to boost literacy
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Siviwe Gwarube, South Africa’s basic education minister, announced the expansion of the mother-tongue-based bilingual education (MTBBE) program to include grade 5 pupils across the country.
The program aims to improve reading comprehension and literacy rates, which a 2021 study showed were low for grade 4 students, with 81% unable to read for meaning. Gwarube explained that students perform better when first taught in their home language.
The department of basic education is extending the MTBBE program beyond grade 3, allowing students to continue learning some subjects in their home languages while also developing English skills. To support this change, the department plans to invest R10 billion into early childhood development, increasing the ECD child subsidy by 41%, from R17 to R24 per child each day.
They also intend to create 115,000 additional ECD spaces in rural provinces through the Outcome-Based Education Fund, with an investment of R496 million. Education specialist Prof Kobus Maree cautioned that successful implementation of mother-tongue education depends on well-trained teachers, quality materials, sufficient instructional time, and systematic teaching of vocabulary and fluency.
He stressed that simply translating lessons is insufficient and that explicit English language instruction remains crucial, as children who don’t regularly speak English at home tend to have lower reading scores. In 2026, the department will train 10,000 foundation phase teachers in literacy and numeracy.
