Johannesburg — EDUCATION Minister Naledi Pandor yesterday announced her department was working on a plan that would see children taught in their mother tongue for the first six years of school, and make an "indigenous" language compulsory for all pupils.

The constitution entrenched South Africans' right to education in the official language of their choice and the education department had developed policies aimed at promoting this right, but "I suspect we would get to do quite badly if we were to get marks (for implementation)," Pandor told academics attending a conference in Pretoria yesterday on the implementation of language policy in higher education institutions.

Pandor has long been a champion of SA's indigenous languages, particularly the nine black languages, and has repeatedly insisted that mother-tongue education, at least in primary school, would improve pupils' performance.

The department's national plan would have pupils in grades 1-6 taught in their mother tongue, with a distinction made between schools serving communities that spoke one language and communities where many languages were spoken, Pandor said.

Research published by the University of Western Cape in 2004 shows that teaching pupils in their mother tongues, especially during their primary school years, will improve standards because it allows for greater comprehension and cognitive development.

The department's plan involved launching a "vigorous" information and advocacy campaign aimed at parents, many of whom were not in favour of their children learning in indigenous languages, Pandor said.

While it was true many black parents chose to send their children to former Model C schools, where teaching was in English, the perceived importance of primary-language education was "very high" among parents of all races, according to research published in 2004 by Prof Lawrence Schlemmer of the South African Institute of Race Relations.

Schlemmer said 61% of blacks, 73% of coloureds, 61% of whites, 80% of white Afrikaners and 66% of English-speaking whites were in favour of mother tongue-education.

The department's plan would also focus on ensuring that it became compulsory that all pupils gained "communicative competence" in an indigenous language, with provincial education departments developing and promoting the learning of languages that were official in their province, Pandor said.

The department also wanted to make all external National Senior Certificate assessment tools, such as exam papers, accessible to pupils in their own language.

"The aim of this component of the implementation plan is to assist learners who are currently learning in a second language to understand the assessment instruments better," Pandor said.

The programme would also seek to "revitalise" the teaching and learning of indigenous languages in higher education institutions, with a focus on undergraduate and teacher education programmes.