As SA celebrated Heritage Day on September 24, basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube highlighted the expansion of Mother Tongue-Based Bilingual Education (MTbBE) to grade 5 pupils.
The policy seeks to strengthen the use of pupils’ home languages as languages of learning and teaching, while maintaining a pathway to proficiency in English.
At face value, this is a welcome development.
In a country where reading comprehension remains a national crisis, enabling children to learn initially in a language they understand intuitively makes educational sense.
The central question, however, is not whether children should learn through their mother tongue.
It is whether government is providing the same quality of education through MTbBE that more privileged children receive through well-resourced English-medium schools.
If implementation is unequal, a policy designed to reduce educational disadvantage could unintentionally deepen it.
Education researchers, including Prof Kobus Maree, have long recognised the importance of developing literacy in a child’s familiar language as a foundation for acquiring proficiency in another language.
But language policy alone cannot transform educational outcomes.
Success depends on several fundamentals: properly trained and proficient teachers, quality learning materials, adequate instructional time, and systematic teaching of vocabulary, reading fluency and comprehension.
There are encouraging signs. Informal observations among schools in and around KuGompo City suggest that some teachers are seeing greater pupil participation and less anxiety in classrooms.
Teachers accompanying pupils to mathematics and science Olympiads have reported that questions presented in isiXhosa enable pupils to engage with greater confidence.
Some parents are also becoming more involved in homework when learning materials are accessible in the home language.
These are important gains. But they should not obscure the formidable obstacles.
Many practising teachers were never formally trained in bilingual or multilingual pedagogy.
Some consequently struggle to prepare lessons that move naturally between isiXhosa and English without allowing one language to dominate.
In numeracy, for example, teachers and pupils can encounter difficulties with mathematical terminology and the reading of numbers in isiXhosa.
The problem becomes even more pronounced in Stem (science, engineering, technology and mathematics) subjects, where teachers may lack the linguistic resources to explain sophisticated scientific concepts accurately in indigenous languages.
The challenge is compounded by the fact that scientific terminology in many African languages is still developing and requires systematic standardisation and dissemination.
Then comes the most familiar enemy of South African education: resources.
Schools need textbooks, readers, dictionaries, workbooks and teacher-support material that are not merely translated, but are contextually appropriate and pedagogically sound.
Yet poorly resourced schools often have to carry the additional burden of photocopying bulk materials.
A policy that requires more resources cannot succeed if the schools expected to implement it have the fewest or none at all.
Teacher morale presents another concern.
Research and reports by organisations including the SA Democratic Teachers' Union, the SA Teachers’ Union and the Teacher Democratic Dividend project at Stellenbosch University have highlighted serious challenges affecting educators, including inadequate resources, infrastructure and working conditions.
A demoralised teacher operating in an under-resourced classroom cannot simply be expected to deliver a sophisticated bilingual education model through policy instruction.
The Eastern Cape illustrates this catastrophe.
The province has faced persistent educational funding and infrastructure challenges.
Against this background, the introduction of MTbBE requires not only political commitment but sustained investment, monitoring and accountability.
This is where the policy’s greatest vulnerability lies.
There is already suspicion in some communities that mother-tongue education could create a two-tier system: English-medium education for children of the affluent, and mother-tongue education for children in townships and rural schools.
Such perceptions become particularly powerful when political leaders champion indigenous-language education while their own children attend well-resourced private or former Model C schools where English remains dominant.
That contradiction must be confronted honestly.
Mother-tongue education should not become a euphemism for second-class education.
Nor should English proficiency be sacrificed in the name of linguistic pride.
SA's children deserve both: a strong foundation in their home language and genuine mastery of English and other languages that expand their educational and economic opportunities.
MTbBE therefore deserves neither automatic applause nor premature condemnation.
Its success will ultimately be measured not by policy documents or Heritage Day speeches, but by whether children read with comprehension, understand mathematics and science, and leave school equipped to compete on equal terms.
The mother tongue can be the foundation. But quality education must be the destination.
Vivi Mpikashe, founder of Velile Education and Development Solutions.