[lg policy] Uganda's Private Schools Must Stop Snubbing Language Learning Policy

[Harold Schiffman]

Uganda's Private Schools Must Stop Snubbing Language Learning Policy

analysis
By Judith Nakayiza, Makerere University and Medadi Ssentanda

Private schools are becoming ubiquitous across Africa. Research has shown
that their growth, although it has positive effects, is also problematic
because many private schools are being set up without proper policy
guidelines.

In Uganda, this absence of policy guidelines manifests in private schools'
attitude to the government's language-in-education policy. Many are simply
snubbing the policy - and they are getting away with it.

*A policy for literacy*

In 2002, Uganda's literacy rate was 76.2% of people aged between 15 and 24.
The Ministry of Education was dissatisfied with this, and in 2004
commissioned an educational review which found that the existing curriculum
was poorly structured. It also revealed that English was the language of
learning and teaching across all primary school years.

The review's authors suggested that this was actually crippling learning in
the early years, because children were coming from homes where they spoke
another language and were expected to become immediately fluent in English.

So in 2007, Uganda's Ministry of Education introduced a policy that
championed mother-tongue education through the curriculum. Mother-tongue
education has well-documented benefits in the early years of learning.

Under the 2007 policy, pupils must be taught in the mother tongue of their
area. This is the language of instruction and English is taught as a
separate subject. In the fourth year of school, English starts to become
the primary language of instruction and then, in the fifth year, it is
established as the only language of instruction.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201509080627.html

All of Uganda's rural schools must choose a dominant local language and use
this as the language of learning and teaching for the first three years of
primary school before making the transition.

But urban government schools are exempt. The policy assumes that their
learners are drawn from different parts of the country and therefore from a
multitude of linguistic backgrounds. That makes it difficult to choose just
one mother tongue for the first three years of schooling.

These schools use English as their medium of instruction but must teach a
mother tongue as a subject.

There is no available data on the number of private schools and government
schools in Uganda, but private schools seem to be in the majority. It is
not uncommon to fund a school in someone's garage at their home. Many are
not regulated at all and are never visited by government inspectors.

*The study: private schools snub the language policy*

In 2013, a study found that most rural public schools were complying with
the policy - particularly those where there was a clearly dominant local
language.

But private schools gave many reasons for snubbing the policy and the
curriculum that was built around it. First, they claimed that their pupils
came from complex, multilingual backgrounds and so should be exempted as
with their urban government counterparts. The study found that this was not
the case: their pupils tend to come from similar language backgrounds.

Second, they preferred not to "waste time" on a subject that is not
examined at the end of primary schooling. In this case, that means a local
language. Instead, they concentrated on English, as this is the language of
examination later in pupils' school careers.


http://allafrica.com/stories/201509080627.html

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its
members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or
sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who
disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write
directly to the original sender of any offensive message.  A copy of this
may be forwarded to this list as well.  (H. Schiffman, Moderator)

For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
listinfo/lgpolicy-list
*******************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20150908/15283828/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list