by ARNE DOORNEBAL
When South Sudan broke away from Sudan in July last year it didn’t only say goodbye to its former rulers in Khartoum, but it also stopped using Arabic as its first language. But phasing out Arabic to make way for English proves to be a lengthy process.
“Good morning sir!” Sixty primary school children shout as teacher Santos Okot (31) walks into his classroom. He tells them to take their seats. “Thank you sir!”
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The school year has just started at the St. Joseph Catholic School, in the city centre of Juba. South Sudanese schools operate between late April and the end of December. The rest of the year – the dry months – they are closed for holiday. “At home these children speak Arabic. They hear it in the streets and in the market. So it is not easy to teach them English,” says Okot.
English has become the teacher’s first language. “During the war in South Sudan I stayed in Uganda and I also studied there,” he says. In the Anglophone country he learned how to master the language. “I also speak Arabic but I cannot read or write it.” Tens of thousands of South Sudanese were educated in refugee camps in Uganda during the 22-year Sudanese conflict.
New curriculum
Although South Sudan only became independent last year, the introduction of an English curriculum started already seven years ago. In January 2005 Southern rebels and the Sudanese government ended the long war with a peace agreement. South Sudan was granted autonomy and one of the agreements in the peace deal was that English would become the prime language of the South.
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