Minister Gwarube said that the 7th Administration is committed to the effective implementation of Mother Tongue-based Bilingual Education (MTbBE) beyond Grade 3 in the South African schooling system.
The Minister recently visited Nal’uxolo Primary School in Langa, Western Cape Province, to engage Grades 3 and 4 learners and teachers as they demonstrated the Funda Wande Programme designed to improve literacy and numeracy in isiXhosa Home Language.
Western Cape MEC for Education, Mr David Maynier and a delegation from the Bill Gates Foundation, joined the Minister during the visit. Funda Wande, a member of Allan and Gill Gray Philanthropies, is a not-for-profit organisation collaborating with various Provincial Education Departments (PEDs) across the country to equip teachers to teach reading-for-meaning and calculating-with-confidence in Grades R to 3 in public schools.
Reflecting on her class observation, Minister Gwarube said that the sustainability of foundational learning is critical to address learning deficits from the General Education and Training (GET) to the Further Education and Training (FET) band. “Funda Wande is a critical programme, which will undoubtedly assist the Basic Education Sector in igniting children’s love for Reading and Mathematics. The Programme develops structured pedagogy materials aimed at training teachers on how to teach these subjects using an evidence-based approach. I also witnessed MTbBE in action. International benchmarking tests show that our learners who learn in their mother tongue outperform those who do not,” added Minister Gwarube.