For most South African learners, the destination language of instruction (typically English) is not their mother tongue; thus, proficiency in English is necessary for educational success. However, research has shown that development of linguistic skills is more effective in the mother tongue, and that these skills can be transferred to a second language (especially when high levels of proficiency are reached in the first language). Much of this research has been in the Global North, where the destination language is spoken by most of the population.
However, this is not the case in South Africa, where English is spoken by fewer than 10% of the population; therefore, it is important to determine the nature of these relationships in the South African context. This study makes use of a large longitudinal dataset containing school-based assessment data for the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KZN, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West to estimate the extent to which Grade 3 Home Language (HL3) mastery predicts Grade 4 repetition and Grade 4 English First Additional Language (EFAL) results.
The results show that higher HL3 results are associated with lower repetition in Grade 4, and there is a pro-female bias in terms of lower predicted repetition which is largest in Quintile 1 schools, even after controlling for HL3 and other factors. Each one unit increase in HL3 was associated with a 0.4 to 0.5 unit increase in Grade 4 EFAL results, with females being advantaged by approximately 4-percentage points (controlling for other factors). This is suggestive of a growing gender gap between grades 3 and 4, especially in the poorest schools.
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