Language of instruction and pupil learning in Ethiopia

• In Event: Power, language and Identity: (In)Equitable Consequences of Language Policies in Africa and beyond (China, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania

Proposal

The potential value of the use of a pupil’s ‘mother tongue’ in primary schooling is well-established in the literature on language-use in education, including in relation to low and middle income countries. A global research literature links mother tongue instruction to improved enrolment, learning and a host of other positive outcomes, including for later transitions to languages of wider communication. Since the early 1990s Ethiopia has implemented one of the most comprehensive programs of mother tongue education in sub-Saharan Africa, with pupils learning in any one of more than 20 languages at the primary level before transitioning to English medium instruction at later stages of schooling. The limited research evidence on the impacts of the policy suggest a positive association between learning in mother tongue, pupil enrolment and possibly also learning.

However, robust estimations of the relationship between language policy and pupil learning in such multilingual settings are particularly challenging. This paper draws on mixed methods PhD research which explores these complexities, examining the challenges of comparable assessment across multiple languages of instruction, the possibility that different languages of instruction may have different relationships to pupil learning, and why this might be the case.

The paper combines analysis of large-scale quantitative data with a small-scale qualitative sub-study. The quantitative data is taken from a Young Lives school survey of 11,500 grade 4 and 5 pupils nested in schools and classes across seven languages of instruction and 30 diverse sites and conducted in the 2012-13 academic year. The qualitative sub-study comprises interviews with parents, teachers and local officials in four schools in two regions (Oromia and Wolayta zone of SNNP region) in 2016. The analysis asks whether different languages of instruction employed within Ethiopia’s mother tongue education policy might have different associations with pupil learning and progress in mathematics, and what the implications of this might be for equity between linguistic groups. Emerging findings suggest a significant association between pupils’ learning in a selection of the newly employed languages of instruction compared to those learning in the historic language of education, Amharic. Qualitative data is used to suggest potential reasons for this association, and to explore the potential limitations of a mother tongue education where this does not enable and ensure pupils are able to communicate in languages of wider communication.

Author

• Zoe James, University College London