Despite a growing consensus among researchers and policy makers in favour of mother-tongue education, up to 40% of the world’s children do not have access to education in their own language. Projects supported under the Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) have repeatedly identified language as a major challenge for teaching, learning and assessment. Across 37 projects in 18 countries, thousands of girls are deprived of the opportunity to learn in a language they understand, leaving them ill-prepared to face national exams and to improve their life chances.
Through statistical analysis of roughly 55,000 individuals across two time periods between 2013-2015, together with qualitative interviews and case studies, this paper aims to shed light on the role of language as a barrier to or enabler of education. It does so through:
- Exploring the linguistic status quo across the GEC portfolio, and examining the effects this has had on learning scores (with implications for how researchers and evaluators can evidence learning through assessment);
- Identifying common themes regarding language in education, with the goal of understanding the ways in which language presents a barrier to learning at the policy, school, individual and community levels; and
- Considering the approaches these 37 projects have adopted in attempting to bridge the language gap.
The paper then presents key recommendations as to how language can be accounted for in future programming, within the GEC and more widely.
The ongoing analysis of results (concluding in May 2017) shows that for these 37 projects, language of instruction has had an important impact on learning, with children learning in their own language generally learning more than their peers. This research is limited by the secondary nature of data collected, however, and more research could strengthen conclusions around the intersection of language with other educational barriers.