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This page provides information on Language Education Policies for numerous countries.

No one would dispute that South African schools are performing below expectations. Diagnosis of the reasons for the inefficiency of South African schools, compared with more poorly resourced systems in the Southern and Eastern African subcontinent, is the first step to improving the quality of learning outcomes.

In 2017, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) said that 27% of public schools nationally are implementing the Incremental Introduction of African Languages (IIAL) in Grades 1 and 2 in 2017 despite challenges, which included an inadequate number of willing and competent teachers as well as negative attitudes and misconceptions about African languages being inferior in the global scheme.

In 2006, when the Hewlett Foundation started the Quality Education in Developing Countries initiative, one of the initiative’s goals was to help answer precisely this question. From 2007 to 2013, combining resources with co-funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foundation supported eleven school-level approaches to improving early learning, accompanied by ten rigorous evaluations.