South Africa: Mother takes school to court over Zulu lessons

[Francis Hult]

Via lgpolicy...
 
Mother takes school to court over Zulu lessons
MONICA LAGANPARSAD Published:Jan 13, 2008

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'My son had failed for the first time in his life'

A TOP Durban school is facing a legal challenge - over its language lessons.

The mother of a pupil at Durban High School, who is a linguist, is
challenging the school for teaching her son substandard Zulu. The case
is set to be of national importance concerning the monitoring of the
implementation of the national education policy on languages at
schools, and could force schools to re-address the standards at which
they teach additional languages. The complaint has been lodged in
Durban's Equality Court by Ntomenhle Rosemary Nkosi on behalf of her
son against the school and its deputy principal Marie Vermaak. Nkosi,
the chief executive officer of the Pan South African Language Board
(Pansalb), claimed in an affidavit that the school had misinterpreted
the national education policy.

She has accused the boys' school of "humiliating" the then Grade 8
pupil on the basis of discrimination of language. Pansalb is based in
Pretoria and was established by Parliament to promote multilingualism
in SA. In her son's first-term report, Nkosi noticed that his
languages of study were English first language, Afrikaans additional
language and Zulu, second additional language. Nkosi said she objected
to the school's application of the language policy, and discussed her
objections with Vermaak during a meeting in August. She said her son
had not been given the right to choose the level of instruction for
Zulu or Afrikaans as set down by the national curriculum statement for
languages.


Full story:
http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/News/Article.aspx?id=678493

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