By Simon Martha Mkina WINDHOEK As of next January, the Deutsche Hohere Privatschule (DHPS) will be a multilingual school after the institution decided to introduce French among the subjects offered. Principal of the school Dr Siegfried Frey said this yesterday at a press conference. Frey said the new programme was designated together with the Association for French Education in response to demands made by various French-speaking people in Namibia. Introducing French will make the school produce trilingual children from grades one to thirteen since German and English are compulsory. From 2008, other subjects might be given partially in French to make children conversant in French. Frey said the introduction of French at the school would maintain a high level of French for those children whose families speak the language, in combination with the local curriculum. Meanwhile, the Ambassador of France in Namibia, Philippe Bossiere, said his government would fully support the programme through a subsidy. He said the subsidy would cater for training the teaching corps and advice on recruiting teachers of French as a mother tongue. The syllabi of the DHPS are based on German, French and Namibian curricula thus enabling the students to sit for the English NSSC/HIGCSE examinations and the German International Abitur. The school has more than 1,000 students and only 5 percent are non-Namibians.