As you know most children in South Africa start school learning through an African language until Grade 3 and then switch to English LOLT in Grade 4. Now there are changes to this as children will no longer be switching to English only but learning in two languages, their home language and some English, from Grade 4.  This is what is called implementation of mother tongue based bilingual education, or MTBBE roll out.  This short course aims to develop your understanding of what bilingual education is (including MTBBE), why it is needed, and how to get started with implementing bilingual education.

You will need to make notes during this course. Please make sure you have a notebook or whatever device you prefer to use to make notes.

Although the course is offered mainly in English, we try and integrate different languages, and at times use just one of the African languages. The course presenters are located in the Western Cape and so many of the examples used show bilingual isiXhosa and English as they are taken from schools in the Western Cape. But we would like to assure you that when we use an African language like isiXhosa, participants will not miss out on the content since the content will also be explained in English. We encourage you to use all the languages you know to think, speak, write and learn in this course.