• Mandarin, French, Arabic, and German among languages to be included in upper primary.
• The ambitious plan will require at least 22,344 teachers to at least equip each school with one foreign language teacher.
Image: JACK OWUOR
It will cost the government Sh5.2 billion annually to hire teachers for the foreign languages to be introduced in primary schools beginning next year.
The four — Chinese, French, German and Arabic — are part of new subjects to be taught in Grade 4 under the new curriculum.
The roll-out to begin in six months will present a unique challenge to the government as it is yet to outline how the subjects will be taught.
Policymakers have suggested that either the foreign languages be shelved and taught in Grade 5 or primary schools specialise in at least one of the subjects, but make it optional.
Should the proposal to specialise in one foreign language be adopted, the government will require some 22,344 foreign language teachers, equal to the number of public primary schools in the country.
The Teachers Service Commission job grading indicates that the lowest earning teacher enters the service with a basic salary of Sh19,224.
This will mean that the government will require a minimum of Sh429 million monthly should they hire the tutors, which translates to roughly Sh5.2 billion each year.
TSC yesterday said the process of hiring teachers will be a multi-agency approach.
“The entire education sector is working together to look into the needs of the curriculum and this includes human resource, infrastructure among other requirements,” TSC communication boss, Kihumba Kamotho, told the Star yesterday.
Currently, foreign languages are taught in a number of private primary schools and are only introduced in public schools at the secondary level.
Many school administrators consider them expensive to teach, hence an unnecessary burden, resulting in little emphasis being put in the subjects.
The uptake of the subjects has been low with the French being the second most taught foreign language in schools after English.
Experts say the reason for low numbers of foreign language students is often a lack of manpower.
There is a shortage of teachers yet many students, even those who take education at the university, do not opt for these subjects, according to data from the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service.
A study by UNESCO reveals that less than one per cent of Kenyans can speak a third international language yet they are required by many employers.
“Those with a foreign language have an edge in competing for international job opportunities more so when the job is in geographical positions that are not English speaking countries,” Alice Ochanda UNESCO program specialist on gender and science told the Star yesterday.
According to the statistics by the World Languages and Cultures, a total of 873 million native Chinese people and another 178 million people worldwide speak Chinese Mandarin which brings the total of Mandarin speakers to 1.051 billion people in the world.
This is by far the most spoken language in the world followed by English at 510 million and Hindi at 410 million people.
Kenya joins a growing list of countries that will offer Chinese Mandarin in schools.
In South Africa, Mandarin has been an optional language course for students since 2014, and in December 2018, Uganda introduced Mandarin to secondary students in selected schools.
Zambia also plans to introduce Mandarin in Secondary schools from 2020.
(Edited by O. Owino)