For many African language-speaking children in South Africa, the transition to English-only instruction from Grade 4 onward can create significant barriers to understanding, with long-lasting educational consequences. However, this challenge is about to be addressed meaningfully.

The University of the Western Cape's (UWC) Bilingual Learning Materials (BLM) project, led by Dr Robyn Tyler, is responding to the critical need for multilingual resources in South African schools. Based at UWC's Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research (CMDR), the BLM project team collaborated with experts from the University of Cape Town to produce a bilingual science booklet, iSayensi Yethu, in 2022. This publication, designed for Grade 4 learners, presents science concepts in both isiXhosa and English, bridging the language gap.

The project has gained momentum since its pilot at a Khayelitsha primary school and support has come from the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has endorsed the use of iSayensi Yethu as an official bilingual resource for Grade 4 Natural Science and Technology learners. This is a significant milestone for Mother Tongue Based Bilingual Education (MTBBE) in South Africa. The roll-out will include large-scale training for teachers on implementing multilingual teaching strategies, ensuring they can effectively support learners.

The BLM project's work doesn't stop there. In 2025, the team plans to introduce Osse Science, a bilingual science booklet in Kaaps and English, offering similar support for Kaaps-speaking students. This expansion reflects UWC's commitment to inclusive and accessible education that honours South Africa's linguistic diversity.

To further support MTBBE, UWC also launched the Languaging-for-Learning project for high schools, led by Dr Margie Probyn. This initiative involves developing translanguaging pedagogies in ten Cape Town high schools between 2022 and 2023. This project aims to enhance learning in Mathematics, English, and Science by formalising bilingual teaching practices, allowing students to leverage their home language and English to understand complex concepts.

Dr Tyler, a CMDR senior researcher, noted that promoting multilingualism in South African schools through MTBBE is critical. "Promoting multilingualism in South African schools is first and foremost about epistemic justice: centring and validating the cultural, linguistic and intellectual resources of African language-speaking children alongside those of English and Afrikaans-speaking children," she said.

"Secondly, it is about enabling children to grasp academic concepts in depth through leveraging English and home language resources to tackle these concepts. Thirdly, MTBBE enables the development of the language proficiencies of children in both English and at least one African language so that they may all remain connected to known languages while crossing boundaries to interact with speakers of other languages."

Dr Tyler believes that MTBBE has the potential to transform our education system. Educators with African language proficiency will become central to the roll-out, positioning those previously thought of as 'English deficient' as knowledgeable bilinguals.

“African language-speaking children will be able to feel 'valued as intellectual beings' (to quote Ms Ludwango from the Languaging-for-Learning project). Furthermore, as children begin to access the curriculum more meaningfully from an early age, their academic results will improve, and more children will perform well. We have data from the Bilingual Learning Materials project which shows a more-than-30% increase in test results when children can answer a bilingual test.”

Dr Tyler added that one of the challenges they face is that people have strong ideas about how languages should be used in schools. "We have faced these ideological barriers, which are deeply embedded in our colonial and Apartheid history. People overvalue English and worry about losing out on learning it, without realising that MTBBE will retain English as a core part of the education system.”

According to Dr Tyler, the success of the two projects is due to collaborations with colleagues from:

• Stellenbosch University (Simthembile Xeketwana);
• the University of Cape Town (Xolisa Guzula, Carolyn McKinney, Gilbert Dolo and Soraya Abdulatief);
• Rhodes University (Monica Hendricks); and,
• the University of the Western Cape (Margie Probyn, Quentin Williams and Babalwayashe Molate).

Dr Tyler said good work is being done at UWC to incorporate multilingual learning into degree programmes. Academics and leaders have recognised that this is a core part of the strategic goal of making UWC inclusive and accessible.