Coltart speaks on language policy

Newsday

By Khanyile Mlotshwa

1 February 2011

The Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture says there is need to have only those teachers fluent in local languages assigned to primary schools in Matabeleland regions.

Education minister David Coltart said the move was appropriate as the first two years of a child’s education were vital hence it was important that they learn in their mother language.

Coltart was speaking at a public meeting in Bulawayo on Friday.

“The most important building block in any child’s education is the first few years they get to learn to read and write in their mother language,” he said.

“They must be able to learn in the language their mother and father speak to them. It forms the basis of their learning. If they don’t get that chance their education will be prejudiced.”

He was responding to the public’s outrage over the general belief that most of the teachers at primary schools did not speak the local IsiNdebele language.

Coltart said the teaching of children by teachers who could communicate in their mother tongues was important even for the so-called minority languages in Zimbabwe.

“It shocked me to know that in the past 30 years, we have not had textbooks in marginalised languages. It is an indictment of the education system of this country. We have so far introduced textbooks from Grade 1 to 7 in marginalised languages.

“It’s not just a question of issuing textbooks. If you don’t have a teacher who can speak that language, the textbook is useless. We need to have teachers fluent in languages like Sotho, Venda and Kalanga,” said the minister.

He said the loss of the status and of young people’s faith in the teaching profession had affected mostly marginalised languages.

“There is a need to encourage students from marginalised communities and languages to train as teachers.

“We have to recover teachers who have gone to South Africa. We have to try and get them back. We have the obligation to make sure that the salary is attractive to them,” he said.

Coltart said the problem his ministry faced was that teachers were trained by different ministries.

“Teacher training is the responsibility of Higher Education and that is the source of the situation that we find ourselves in, where we end up with teachers that may not be conversant in local languages.

“Is it right that the training of teachers for my ministry be in the hands of another ministry? That is just a question I want you to think about,” Coltart said.

“Educationists in my ministry feel it is not right. We need to oversee the training of our teachers so that in their deployment,  we know the skills they will need, we know where they are needed and in what numbers,” he said.