The South African schools curriculum is in line for some major developments, with the introduction of coding as a subject and Swahili – also known as Kiswahili – as a language option.

Kiswahili, the third most spoken language in Africa after English and Arabic, will promote social cohesion, while making South Africans more employable, say curriculum planners.

Basic education minister Angie Motshekga announced earlier last week that Kiswahili, a language with similarities to a number of other African languages, would be added as an optional language by 2020.

These developments were approved by the council of education ministers.

According to Motshekga, there are 15 non-official languages listed in the national curriculum statement (NCS) as optional subjects. These include French, German and Mandarin.

“There is unfortunately no African language in the list of languages,” Motshekga said.

“The origin of all these languages is outside the continent, except for Arabic, the afro-Asiatic language family, which is spoken by North African Arabic countries.

“This continues to perpetuate the colonial mentality and necessitated us to take action and rectify it,” she said.

“Kiswahili was used as a trading language and a means of inter-ethnic communication long before the coming of Europeans in Africa.

“It is expanding to countries that never spoke it and has the power to bring Africans together.

“It is one of the official languages of the African Union and we are confident the teaching of Kiswahili in schools will help to promote social cohesion with our fellow Africans,” she said.

The department did not indicate when coding would be introduced, saying they were still working on it.

Coding is a vocabulary and set of grammatical rules for instructing a computer or computing devices such as robots to perform specific tasks.

Motshekga said coding would teach pupils computational thinking skills.

“Before computers can be used to solve a problem, the problem itself and the ways in which it could be resolved must be understood.

“Learners must determine the task they want to complete through a robot, design the code to make it happen, and then send it to the robot to view the outcome,” she said.

The Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) believes more should be done for the existing curriculum first.

PSAM head of advocacy and monitoring, Zukiswa Kota said: “Our biggest question is where the money and the resources is going to come from.

“We urge them to focus on the existing curriculum first before adding major developments.”

The new additions come just a year after the department approved marine sciences in schools.

There are 11 schools along the coast that offer marine studies – two of them in East London, Ngwenyathi High in Nxarhuni and George Randall High School.