Question NW927 to the Minister of Basic Education

Reply:

(a)(b)(c)

Table 1 below shows that about 1 126 and 5 790 public schools use only Afrikaans and English, respectively, as their language of learning and teaching, while 1 112 school use both Afrikaans and English.

Please note that single medium school is defined as “a school that offers only one medium of instruction in every grade of the school.

The term "dual medium of instruction" refers to the employment of two languages as media of instruction, wherein a teacher switches from one medium of instruction to another during a lesson on a 50:50 percent basis. In this instance, the teacher repeats the instruction in another language.

For a school to be classified as dual medium school, all learners of that school should be receiving the tuition through dual medium of instruction. Such information is not collected from schools as it is very difficult to collect.

The Department does however collect information on parallel medium schools. It defines a parallel medium school as one that offers more than one medium of instruction in all grades of the school.

Table 1: Number of public schools by, language of learning and teaching and province

Province	Afrikaans Single-Medium Schools	English Single-Medium Schools	English\Afrikaans parallel medium Schools
Ec	149	890	141
FS	56	217	90
GT	113	563	188
KZ	7	1 367	45
LP	15	1 406	39
MP	18	541	60
NC	158	61	121
NW	44	371	43
WC	566	374	385
Total	1 126	5 790	1 112

Source: LURITS

The underlying principle of the Language in Education Policy is to maintain the use of Home language as the LOLT, hence, there are schools using English and other African languages as LOLT. Majority of primary schools use English and home language as their LOLT especially in the foundation phase. The question requires schools that offers only English and Afrikaans.