Recent media reports suggesting that the ministry of education was ”culling” languages in the new curriculum for grades 10 to 12 were completely inaccurate, Education Minister Kader Asmal said on Wednesday.
The reports said Asmal was ”culling” 12 of the 18 foreign languages taught in South African schools and that only six would remain when the new curriculum was introduced in 2006.
A ministry spokesperson said the minister was referring to a report in the Sunday Times of June 15, as well as follow-up news reports carried by a number of radio stations.
The reports distorted the position of his ministry on the matter, said Asmal.
Some foreign languages had such low enrolment figures that they could not be sustained as school subjects owing to budget constraints.
Italian higher grade for instance had 17 students last year and Spanish higher grade only 12. Tamil had four students and Urdu two. Ndonga, Telugu and Classical Greek have had no students for several years, said Asmal.
He wrote to a number of embassies about the problem, he said, and some of them undertook to fund the teaching of their county’s languages in local schools.
The languages would not be taught only in former model C schools, but in selected township and rural schools also.
The issue was not about ”culling”, said Asmal, but about the government’s ability to fund the teaching of foreign languages. The ministry would support all language communities that wished to offer their languages for teaching — especially languages commonly used in South Africa — for example Urdu, Tamil, Gujarati, Hindi and Hebrew. – Sapa