South Sudan moves to end Arabic schooling
4 min readBy Hannah McNeish (AFP)
JUBA, South Sudan — Newly independent South Sudan will change the language of schooling to English this year, shrugging off decades of Arabic imposed from the north, the government announced on Wednesday.
The new nation’s parliament passed the Higher and General Education Bill late Tuesday that all education from primary level will be taught in English.
“This new year, we are teaching our national languages at the pre-school and the rest of the instructions, mathematics or science, all in English, there’s no Arabic. We’ll have Arabic only as a language as a subject”, Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin told reporters.
“That’s how it used to be, till it was changed, since 1898. They changed it only in 1989 when they declared sharia (Islamic) law in the whole country”, he said of the former British colony.
The fledgling government faces a host of daunting challenges in building a nation from scratch after gaining independence from the mainly Arab north in July after decades of civil war that left the country in ruins.
After years of fighting and neglect, only 16 percent of South Sudanese are literate, and very few of them women.
The government hopes the move will unify the new nation, which is thought to have over 60 indigenous languages, and also bring it into line with neighbouring countries’ education systems.
“This will also make it easy for the syllabuses within South Sudan to fall within the context of East African syllabuses and universities”, Benjamin said.
Khartoum will still set exams for those already at secondary school for the next three years while the country makes the transition to English, which was made the official language in a new constitution last month, Benjamin said.
South Sudan has around 18,000 teachers, many of them from Kenya or Uganda.
The government plans to train 7,000 teachers to use English as the language of instruction and build 11 national secondary schools covering all 10 of the country’s states.
The new act makes primary education free and compulsory for all in a country lacking basic infrastructure, where only 10 percent of children complete primary school and 64 percent do not attend.
The UN children’s agency (UNICEF) said enrolment has increased from around 343,000 in 2005, when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed with the north, to 1.6 million last year.
Benjamin said renovating “crumbling” schools in the underdeveloped nation was a priority that could tempt the largely pastoral nation with many nomadic tribes into investing in education as well as cows.
“”If you build proper schools, they will take their children there”, he said.
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South Sudan schools to teach in English, not Arabic
JUBA Oct 26 (Reuters) – South Sudan said on Wednesday its schools will start teaching English, phasing out Arabic that had been used as a tool to spread Islamic law and Arab heritage by former civil war foe Khartoum.
The mainly Muslim north imposed Islamic law and Arabic on the south, which seceded in July to become the world’s newest nation, and where most follow Christian and traditional beliefs.
The language move is symbolic of the nation’s vision of closer integration with African neighbours, said Samson Wattara, an associate professor in political science at Juba University.
“The switch will not be automatic and will probably be problematic but South Sudanese want to look southwards,” Wattara told Reuters.
“This is a departure from the arabisation doctrine which was consistently opposed by different rebellions,” he said.
South Sudan’s government passed a bill making English mandatory for teaching in primary and secondary schools, Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin told reporters.
“Under the Khartoum government subjects were universally taught in Arabic. We will teach our national languages at pre-school and for the rest, the instructions in mathematics or science will all be in English,” he said.
South Sudan has dozens of local languages and dialects, but the most commonly spoken languages are English and Arabic.
Benjamin said the country is training 7,000 new teachers to help launch the new syllabus, to give students easier access to universities in east Africa. Secondary school students will continue to sit exams in Arabic for the next three years.
South Sudan’s independence vote, agreed under a 2005 peace deal, ended decades of civil war with the north over religion, oil, ethnicity and ideology.
North and South Sudan yet have to settle a range of disputes such as sharing oil revenues and other assets and find a solution for the disputed border region of Abyei. (Reporting by Hereward Holland; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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