Dealing with disparities: the teaching and assessment of official languages at first language level in the grade 12 school-leaving phase in South Africa

Abstract

Disparities emanating from South Africa's apartheid history still pose a number of challenges to the country, especially in education. Since the transition to democracy in 1994, the prescribed government school curriculum has undergone several revisions in an endeavour to set standards and provide instruction of a high quality. On the language education front, laws and policies have been adopted to ensure, inter alia, the maintenance and development of the 11 official languages and the granting of parity of esteem as required by the country's constitution. Notwithstanding the fact that the objective of an equal and quality education may take considerable time to achieve, the ongoing provision of an education of an undesirable standard two decades into democracy could be seen as undermining the constitution and as a perpetuating form of injustice. This paper problematises the equalisation of educational standards against the historical background of the country and provides a critical overview of initiatives taken by education authorities to introduce a more equitable system. The conclusion reached is that policy is not translating into effective practice and that insufficient attention is being devoted to the standard of teaching and assessment of the school language subjects, placing them in a weak position for use in linguistically challenging (higher register) domains.