2025 has been a watershed year for South Africa’s Mother Tongue-based Bilingual Education (MTbBE) “equaliser” policy. It has also been the year that confirmed the country’s severe literacy crisis. Casting a shadow on South Africa’s ability to achieve its 2030 goal that all 10-year-olds will be able to read for meaning, last week’s release of literacy benchmarks by the Department of Basic Education (DBE) revealed that only 46% of Grade 4 learners nationally reach the reading benchmark.
At the same time, the Funda Uphumelele National Survey (FUNS) benchmarks are underpinned by a strong endorsement of MTbBE’s potential to solve the country’s literacy crisis. MTbBE is a transformative framework that uses a learner’s home language as the primary tool for teaching and learning, while gradually introducing English. It strengthens the foundation for learners whose home languages were excluded after Grade 3, unlike English and Afrikaans speakers, who have a historic advantage.
And for the first time, the FUNS research tracks the percentages of children meeting critical reading benchmarks in all eleven official home languages from Grade 1 to Grade 4. The FUNS study recognises that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work in such a complex, multilingual country.
While the benchmarks will track reading progress, they also reveal challenges and complexities in implementing effective MTbBE learning: insufficient teacher training, a shortage of suitable learning materials, difficulties in developing a comprehensive academic lexicon across all languages, and varying levels of learner language proficiency.
The reinforcement of MTbBE policy in FUNS follows key developments this year, including:
- The extension of MTbBE to more African languages for Mathematics, Science, and Technology beyond Grade 3 into Grade 4.
- President Cyril Ramaphosa’s firm commitment to the rollout of MTbBe in his State of the Nation address.
- The allocation of R57 million in the 2025/2026 budget, earmarked for MTbBE’s national rollout, including teacher training.
- Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube’s parliamentary pledge to implement MTbBE pedagogy in Mathematics, Natural Science, and Technology for identified schools in Quintiles 1-5 by the end of 2025.
The MTbBE rollout marked a milestone, after decades of policy discussions, said Professor Leketi Makalela, DBE’s MTbBE technical director and founding director of the Hub for Multilingual Education and Literacies at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Tracking Literacy Trends
“Previously, most schools for African-language speakers switched to English-only instruction in Grade 4, a legacy of the apartheid system. The new programme, reinforced by the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act, seeks to correct this imbalance and promote linguistic diversity and equity”.
“The African child has a constitutional right to receive education in their home language, thereby equalising the education system as directed by the Constitution,” said Makalela. The policy builds on piloting MTbBE in the Eastern Cape (EC) since 2012, where IsiXhosa and Sesotho were used as Languages of Learning, Teaching and Assessment (LoLTA). The rollout was expanded after participants outperformed non-MTbBE schools in Mathematics and Natural Sciences.
The rollout is focused on the nine previously marginalised African languages (IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, IsiNdebele, Siswati, Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi, Tshivenda and Xitsonga), to bring parity with English and Afrikaans. South Africa’s education and learning fraternity converged on the Capital city last week to unveil the ground-breaking FUNS report, with Gwarube pledging that the data would be used at three levels: to track progress nationally, provincially and by language in years to come; to strengthen accountability and support through district offices and school management using new, language-appropriate assessments; and in classrooms, where teachers will run diagnostic checks and target remediation.
DBE Director for Reading, Dr Nompumelelo Nyathi Mohohlwane, expressed deep concern at the low reading levels revealed by FUNS. Foundation years fared even lower than the 46% in Grade 4, with 70% of children from Grade 1
to 3 unable to recognise letters or read words quickly enough to understand them.
There were significant inequalities in the likelihood of reaching benchmarks by language, province, gender, and socio-economic status. Learners assessed in English were most likely to reach benchmarks by Grade 4, as were learners
in the Western Cape and Gauteng, compared to other provinces. These advantages are largely attributable to the higher average socio-economic status of these groups. The report further states that children in better-resourced quintile 5 schools are roughly twice as likely to reach benchmarks as children in no-fee schools (quintile 1-3). The gender gap is wide, with girls in some languages being twice as likely to reach the benchmarks as boys.
Potential vs Disadvantage
The rollout has sparked sector-wide discussion. Proponents highlight the potential of Mother Tongue instruction to boost learner confidence, improve literacy, and address long-standing inequities. There is some scepticism on the ground, with parents often believing that English proficiency is vital for academic and economic success. They worry that prioritising African languages could disadvantage their children in the long run and limit their chances of university admission. In a tangential controversy, some Afrikaans-speaking institutions critical of BELA feared an erosion of their single-language autonomy.
Describing MTbBE as a “breakthrough” in an open letter to Gwarube in September, a group of top educators cited research that proves its value. “{It} offers children the best of both worlds: the chance to learn and understand deeply in their own language, while also building strong English skills. Research from South Africa and across the globe is clear — learners achieve more, stay longer in school, and go further in life when taught in this way.”
Expressing urgency, the collective called on the Minister to affirm MTbBE as a core priority, “and to provide the sustained political will and resources it needs to succeed”. The SA Democratic Teachers’ Union also raised concerns about the lack of funding and the haste with which the implementation directive was issued to participating schools, less than three months before the start of the 2025 school year.
While MTbBE is now mandated and monitored by the Presidency, scholars and language specialists point to a mismatch between a well-intended policy and the practical realities on the ground. At some schools, practical considerations leave no alternative but to use English or Afrikaans. This is the case at RS Maluleke Primary, a no-fee Quintile 1 school in Soshanguve, north-west of Pretoria, which struggled to find Sepedi and XiTsonga teachers in the foundation phase. While these languages are widely spoken in the community and the school, there was also an ever-increasing number of non-sePedi and xiTsonga speakers, mostly migrants from Tanzania, Kenya and Namibia.
Principal and maths teacher Mosiwa Sebola said the school had reverted to teaching in English since 2018. Challenges persist, he said. Besides learners being forced to learn in a second language rather than their home languages, teachers lack the resources, skills and innovative approaches to teach effectively in multilingual classrooms.
MTbBE’s premise is that English should support the mother tongue, thereby making classrooms bilingual. Therefore, teacher education needs to emphasise bilingual pedagogy — how to effectively teach in two languages without causing cognitive overload. This includes training teachers in translanguaging and other bilingual and multilingual learning strategies.
Mixed signals elsewhere in Africa
Mother-tongue bilingual learning, globally recognised as best practice, remains both a developing field and a subject of contestation. After the FUNS launch, AfricaNews.com reported that two West African giants were taking opposing policy stances. Nigeria reversed its mother-tongue policy, reinstating English-only instruction from pre-primary through secondary school, a move defended by the Education Minister as “evidence-based.” In contrast, Ghana mandated compulsory mother-tongue instruction from Kindergarten to Primary 3, thereafter transitioning gradually to English.
These shifts underscore the complexities of language and education policy in the region. They also reinforce the oft-stated observation that primary barriers to successful education reforms, particularly those involving language, are not the languages themselves but systemic issues such as insufficient teacher training, inadequate materials, and limited resources, as noted in the 2025 UNESCO report: Languages Matter: Global Guidance on Multilingual Education, which advocates that “every learner has a right to learn in a language they understand”.
On the ground in Kgabalatsane
Mmeme Makgopela, principal of Kgabalatsane Primary, a quintile 1 school outside Brits, has observed improved comprehension among Grade 4 learners since introducing MTbBE this year. “Their understanding of subjects has drastically improved after receiving instructions in maths, natural science and technology in seTswana,” she said.
Nadeema Musthan, Room to Read literacy director, affirmed that children learn best when taught in their home language, building stronger foundations globally. “The best way to succeed in English is to have a fully developed mother tongue and build English next to it. It is both. We now have a policy imperative for African languages to be used beyond three years.”
Dr Xolisa Guzula, a language and early biliteracy expert at the University of Cape Town’s School of Education, said the “dream has finally become a reality” with the implementation of MTbBE. “While we anticipate challenges as with any changes that take place in education, we believe that with support for teachers through teacher training, materials development and mentorship, this reality will be seen by all.”
The article has been produced with the support of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation
