STEVEN TAU
JOHANNESBURG – The Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, and the US deputy chief of mission Don Teitelbaum launched the “American-South African” partnership yesterday in a bid to produce children’s books in local languages.
The three-year programme, funded by the US President’s Africa Education Initiative, intends to improve educational opportunities for Africa’s children.
Yesterday’s programme commemorated World Literacy Month, in which 600 000 copies of new books and learning materials for third, fourth and fifth grade students will be published by the Ithuba writing project.
Teitelbaum presented the first 16 storybooks to Pandor in front of an audience of children and educators at the Dr Mathole Motshekga Primary School in Midrand.
“Developing and producing books as well as educational resources for primary school pupils in science, mathematics and health education, are key objectives of the project,” he said.
“South Africans are being trained to prepare materials in all 11 official languages.”
Meanwhile, the books will feature 120 titles and focus on the country’s most marginalised languages, including Siswati, Ndebele, Tshivenda and Xitsonga.
Pandor said it was a well-established fact that home languages could be a powerful vehicle for developing foundational concepts for future learning, if correctly used.
* The Dr Mathole Motshekga Primary School has 37 teachers and 1 400 students, aged 6-13, including many orphans.