Brian Ramadiro

Brian Ramadiro is Deputy Director of the Nelson Mandela Institute for Education and Rural Development at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa. As a researcher and educator in the Faculty of Education, his work focuses on multilingual education and literacy development. He specializes in designing and implementing school-based multilingual education programs, advocating for policies that align with South Africa’s constitutional commitment to linguistic diversity.

Education:

• 2017 – University of London, Applied Linguistics

Ramadiro’s research highlights systemic inequities in South African education, particularly the marginalization of non-English-speaking students. He collaborates with the Bua-Lit language and literacy collective, which critiques current language policies as discriminatory. His work emphasizes practical solutions, such as pilot projects in the Eastern Cape that demonstrate improved academic outcomes through mother-tongue-based bilingual instruction in isiXhosa and Sesotho.

The article he authored explores how extending bilingual education beyond Grade 3 could address learning disparities, referencing a pilot program where learners scored 28 percentage points higher in science and technology compared to English-only cohorts. His findings underscore the need for institutional support to scale multilingual education frameworks.