[lg policy] UK: Language in School: If You Don't Understand, How Can You Learn

Sat Feb 20 16:05:07 UTC 2016

Language in School: If You Don't Understand, How Can You Learn?

[image: 40pc copy copy]How a country chooses the language for its education
system is not an easy process. The decision is usually influenced by
multiple factors: colonial history, origins of immigrants, legal
recognition of minority languages, cultural diversity, political interests
- to mention but a few. In some cases, instruction is provided in more than
one language; in others the medium of instruction may vary between primary
and secondary education.

Underneath this tangled and evolving web of policies and priorities,
however, lies an undeniable truth: *teaching and assessing children in a
language they understand will result in better learning*. This is something
that has been recognised now for decades. It is written into the 1989 ILO
Convention and Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 2001 Universal
Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Our new paper out today, '*If you don't
understand, how can you learn?'* <https://bit.ly/MLD2016> confirms this
basic principle, and yet reports that, despite the overwhelming evidence
supporting this claim, 40% are still not able to access education in a
language they understand.  It is clear that the complex nature of factors
affecting language-education policy still take precedent over the
accumulation of evidence.

Countries with colonial histories often find that shifting to bilingual
education is complicated, as can be seen in many Latin American contexts
that continue to use Portuguese, or Spanish, or in many Francophone African
countries, where French remains the predominant language of instruction.
Our World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE)
<http://www.education-inequalities.org/> shows that this trend seriously
hampers students' chances of learning. In Côte d'Ivoire,
<http://www.education-inequalities.org/indicators/rlevel1#?sort=mean&dimension=speaks_language&group=all&age_group=rlevel1_1&countries=all>
for example, 55% of grade 5 students who speak the test language at home
learned the basics in reading in 2008, compared with only 25% of those who
speak another language.

[image: graph1]

Nor is this confined to sub-Saharan Africa. In Iran
<http://www.education-inequalities.org/indicators/rlevel1#?sort=mean&dimension=speaks_language&group=all&age_group=rlevel1_1&countries=all>,
around 80% of grade 4 students who spoke a language other than Farsi at
home reached the basics in reading, compared with over 95% of Farsi
speakers.

[image: graph 2]

Similarly, in Honduras,
<http://www.education-inequalities.org/indicators/rlevel1#?sort=mean&dimension=speaks_language&group=all&age_group=rlevel1_1&countries=all>
in 2011, 94% of students who spoke the language of instruction at home
learned the basics in reading in primary school compared to 62% of those
who did not.

[image: graph3]

[image: MLD circle 2]Part of the repeated emphasis over teaching children
in a language they understand is because linguistic barriers only serve to
exacerbate the divides caused by other disadvantages such as poverty or
gender or location. Students from poor households who speak a minority
language at home are among the lowest performers. In Turkey in 2012, around
50% of poor non-Turkish speakers among 15 year olds achieved minimum
benchmarks in reading, against the national average of 80%. As such, a
mono-lingual education system can unwittingly promote educational
disadvantages and economic inequalities from one generation to the next.

The decision over language policy in schools is highly contested since the
choice of which language to use for instruction can divide just as it can
unite; it forms a group's identity, and as such can be the glue to bring
people together, or the barrier that divides them.

In multi-ethnic countries, in particular, the imposition of a single
dominant language as the language of instruction in schools, while
sometimes a choice of necessity, has been a frequent source of grievance
linked to wider issues of social and cultural inequality.

Our paper lays out several of these examples. Disputes about using Kurdish
in schools have been an integral part of the conflict in eastern *Turkey*.
In *Nepal*, the imposition of Nepali as the language of instruction fed
into the broader set of grievances among non-Nepali speaking castes and
ethnic minorities that drove the civil war. *Guatemala's* imposition of
Spanish on schools was seen by indigenous people as part of a broader
pattern of social discrimination. In *Pakistan*, the continued use of Urdu
as the language of instruction in government schools, even though it is
spoken at home by less than 8% of the population, has also contributed to
political tensions
The GMR 2005 <http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001373/137333e.pdf>[image:
MLD circle] <http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001373/137333e.pdf>
argued that there can be no discussions of quality in education without
consideration of the language of instruction. With a renewed focus on
quality in the post-2015 education agenda, our new paper
<https://bit.ly/MLD2016> helps policy makers find a way through the issue,
and lays out some key recommendations to ensure that children are taught in
a language they understand.

   1. *At least six years of mother tongue instruction is needed, *if the
   gains from teaching in mother tongue in the early years are to be sustained.
   2. *Education policies should recognize the importance of mother tongue
   learning*. A review of 40 countries' education plans finds that only
   less than half of them recognize the importance of teaching children in
   their home language, particularly in early grades.
   3. *Teachers need to be trained to teach in two languages and to
   understand the needs of second-language learners*. Teachers are rarely
   prepared for the reality of bilingual classrooms. In Senegal, only 8%, and
   in Mali, only 2% of trained teachers expressed confidence about teaching in
   local languages. The paper suggests hiring teachers from minority language
   communities as one policy solution to the problem.
   4. *Teachers need inclusive teaching materials and appropriate
   assessment strategies* to help them identify weak learners and provide
   them with targeted support.
   5. *Provide culturally appropriate school-readiness programmes*: Locally
   recruited bilingual teaching assistants can support ethnic minority
   children from isolated communities as they make the transition into primary
   school.
   6. *Second-chance accelerated learning programmes in local languages*
   can help the disadvantaged to catch up.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/aaron-benavot/language-in-school_b_9272850.html

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