Multilingualism and Language in Education

MULTILINGUALISM AND
LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION
Sociolinguistic and Pedagogical Perspectives
from Commonwealth Countries
Edited by Androula Yiakoumetti

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CONTENTS
Notes on contributors v
Series Editors’ Preface xi
Introduction Language policy and practice with a focus on

Commonwealth contexts
Androula Yiakoumetti (Oxford Brookes University, UK) xiii
PART ONE Africa

Chapter 1 The sociolinguistic and language education landscapes of
African Commonwealth countries
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu (Howard University, USA) 1
Chapter 2 Multilingualism and language in education in Tanzania
Birgit Brock-Utne (University of Oslo, Norway) and Martha A. S. Qorro
(University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) 19
Chapter 3 Language-in-education policy and practice in Ghanaian classrooms:

Lessons from School for Life’s complementary education programme
Kingsley Arkorful (Education Development Center) and
Carolyn Temple Adger (Center for Applied Linguistics, USA) 31
PART TWO South Asia

Chapter 4 Language-in-education policy and practice in India:
Experiments on multilingual education for tribal children
Ajit Mohanty (National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium)
and Minati Panda (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India) 49
Chapter 5 Multilingual education in Singapore: Beyond language communities?
Ritu Jain and Lionel Wee (National University of Singapore) 67
Chapter 6 Translanguaging in Singapore: Discourse in monolingual versus

bilingual classrooms
Viniti Vaish (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) 87
PART THREE Australia
Chapter 7 Home dialect at school: The case of Australian Aboriginal
English-speaking students
Farzad Sharifian (Monash University, Australia) 103
Chapter 8 Schooling within shifting langscapes: Educational responses in

complex Indigenous language contact ecologies
Denise Angelo and Nina Carter (Australian National University) 119
PART FOUR The Caribbean and North America

Chapter 9 School rules: Language education policies and practices in the
Creole-speaking Caribbean
Hubert Devonish, Paula Daley-Morris, and Karen Carpenter
(University of the West Indies, Jamaica) 143
Chapter 10 Minority languages in Canada in the context of
official bilingualism
Thomas Ricento (University of Calgary, Canada) 161
Chapter 11 Trouble on the frontier: The perils of persisting colonial
language policies in Canada
Jessica Ball (University of Victoria, Canada) 177
Chapter 12 Long-term English learners and language education policy
Jenna Cushing-Leubner and Kendall A. King (University of
Minnesota, USA) 199
Chapter 13 Translanguaging frameworks for teachers: Macro and
micro perspectives
Ofelia García and Sarah Hesson (City University of New York, USA) 221
PART FIVE Europe

Chapter 14 Rethinking multilingualism: Trajectories in policy, pedagogy
and research in the UK
Jim Anderson and Vicky Macleroy (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK) 243
Chapter 15 Dialects, education and social change in Malta and Gozo
Antoinette Camilleri Grima (University of Malta) 267
Chapter 16 The sociolinguistic and educational landscape of Cyprus
Androula Yiakoumetti (Oxford Brookes University, UK) 287
Index 295
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Jim Anderson (Goldsmiths, University of London) is Senior Lecturer in Languages

in Education in the Department of Educational Studies. His work focuses on the-
ories and methods of second-language learning, including Content and Language
Integrated Learning (CLIL), multilingualism and new literacies, and language policy.
He led the introduction of the Secondary PGCE in Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin,
Panjabi and Urdu at Goldsmiths and was coordinator of this course until 2014. He
now teaches primarily on the department’s MA course in Culture, Language and
Identity. He also supervises students pursuing higher degrees and works on certificate
courses for teachers of Arabic and Chinese under the Goldsmiths Teacher Centre.
Denise Angelo (Australian National University) is an educator, language teacher,

a specialist in English as an Additional Language curriculum and a linguist who
has worked in primary, secondary and tertiary education contexts. She has worked
with teams teaching traditional Aboriginal languages across northern Australia;
training Aboriginal interpreters and translators; researching contact language var-
ieties; developing resources and building educators’ capacity to support Indigenous
students with complex ‘language contact’ backgrounds in English-medium class-
rooms. Contact language varieties – their historical and present day development,
their role for communities, families and individuals, the recognition and attitudes
assigned to them and their impact in education – are a particular research interest.
Kingsley Arkorful (Education Development Center Inc.) is a Principal Inter-

national Technical Advisor currently engaged in programme design and develop-
ment initiatives for education programmes focused on literacy, curriculum material
development, teacher-training and education management in sub-Saharan Africa.
He holds a PhD in International Education and Development from the University
of Sussex. His current research interests and work are in the areas of education pro-
gramme development in sub-Sahara Africa, mother-tongue instruction, formal
school curriculum development and implementation, complementary/alternative
education programmes, literacy acceleration and access to education. He has headed
and taught in a primary school, taught in secondary schools and in a teacher training
college, and also served as an examiner for the West African Examination Council.
He has worked and travelled in all regions of Ghana and has worked as a resource
person for a number of NGOs locally and internationally related to Education and
Community Development, and has acted as the Programme Coordinator for the
World Bank funded Schooling Improvement Fund. He was the Associate Director
v
vi Notes on contributors
for Field Activities for the USAID funded Community School Alliances Project and
the Deputy Team Leader/Senior Technical Advisor for the Education Quality for All
(EQUALL) Project funded by USAID.
Jessica Ball (University of Victoria) is a Professor in the School of Child and Youth
Care at the University of Victoria, Canada. She has worked on three continents at all
levels of education including early childhood formal and informal preschools, pri-
mary and secondary school, and tertiary education. Her programme of scholarship,
Early Childhood Development Intercultural Partnerships, involves child and family
development projects brought forward by Indigenous and minority organisations
and communities around the world. She is well-known internationally for her work
on capacity-building in early childhood education and in the area of mother-tongue
based multilingual education. She has published over 100 journal articles and book
chapters and several books.
Birgit Brock-Utne (University of Oslo) is a Professor in Education and Development

who also works as a consultant around the globe. She has been a Professor at the
University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, for four years. She has been a Visiting
Professor at several universities in the US, at the University of Otago in New
Zealand, the University of Hiroshima in Japan, the European University of Peace in
Austria and the Universitat Jaume Primero in Spain. In 2011 she was the President
of BAICE (the British Association of Comparative and International Education).
She was the Norwegian coordinator of the Language of Instruction in Tanzania and
South Africa project.
Antoinette Camilleri Grima (University of Malta) is Professor of Applied

Linguistics. After her postgraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh, she co-
ordinated international projects on linguistic diversity in education as part of the
Council of Europe programme, and has worked as a linguistic administrator at the
EU Council of Ministers. She has international experience as a language teacher,
particularly having taught Maltese as a foreign language to EU translators, and has
published regularly on bilingual education, dialects in education, and code-switch-
ing as a pedagogical resource in the classroom.
Nina Carter (Australian National University) has worked in a range of contexts in

Australia and overseas in the field of language teaching, English as an Additional
Language, curriculum development and teacher training. She has worked in class-
room-based and departmental roles across primary, secondary and tertiary sectors.
Her research interests include teachers’ understandings and expressions of their
students’ additional language development, especially in contact language contexts,
and classroom and system-wide responses to the provision of language teaching
alongside curriculum content.
Jenna Cushing-Leubner (University of Minnesota) is a PhD student in Second

Languages and Cultures Education at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction
vii Notes on contributors
at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches and conducts research on English
as an Additional Language and Heritage Language maintenance programmes in K-12
schools, teacher dispositions, and teacher education and professional development
towards culturally responsive teaching and academic plurilingual development. She
holds a BA in Linguistics and German from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
and an MA in TESOL. Cushing-Leubner is the author of an English as an Additional
Language textbook series for Austrian secondary schools and has conducted re-
search on educational systems and student learning in the US, Austria and Turkey.
Ofelia García (City University of New York) is Professor in the PhD programmes
of Urban Education and of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages
at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among her recent
books are: Bilingual Education in the Twenty-First Century: A Global Perspective;
Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education (with Li Wei), Handbook
of Language and Ethnic Identity, I and II (with J. A. Fishman); Educating Emergent
Bilinguals (with J. Kleifgen); Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times (with L.
Bartlett); Negotiating Language Policies in Schools (with K. Menken); Imagining
Multilingual Schools (with T. Skutnabb-Kangas and M. Torres-Guzmán), and
A Reader in Bilingual Education (with C. Baker). She is the Associate General
Editor of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language and the co-editor of
Language Policy.
Sarah Hesson (City University of New York) is a doctoral candidate in the Urban
Education programme at the CUNY Graduate Center where she is an Enhanced
Chancellor’s Fellow. Her research interests include bilingual education policy and
pedagogy and social justice education. Sarah is also an Adjunct Lecturer at Hunter
College in the Bilingual Education Graduate Program. The courses she has taught
include Foundations of Bilingual Education, Using Home Language and English to
teach Content to Emergent Bilingual Students, and Bilingual Practicum. She has
also served as a field supervisor for new teachers. Previously she received a Master’s
degree in Bilingual Childhood Education from Fordham University through the
NYC Teaching Fellows Program and worked at the NYC Department of Education
as a bilingual teacher at both the elementary and middle school levels for six years.
Ritu Jain (National University of Singapore) is a doctoral candidate in the South

Asian Studies Program at the National University of Singapore. Her interest lies
in aspects of language management among Indians in more recent transnational/
diasporic societies. In her dissertation, she is exploring the influence of language
ideologies in shaping language practices among the non-Tamil Indian language
speakers in Singapore. In particular, her focus is Hindi, its status within and be-
yond Singapore, and how it frames second-language choices of the five other Indian
languages that have been given semi-official status there. She also teaches a range of
diaspora studies, language and communication-related undergraduate modules at
various tertiary institutions in Singapore.
viii Notes on contributors
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu (Howard University) is Professor of Linguistics and

Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English. He holds an MA and a
PhD in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has also
received a Fulbright Award and a Howard University Distinguished Faculty Research
Award. He has taught at the National University of Singapore, the University of
Swaziland and the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, where he was Director
of the Linguistics Programme. His research interests include language policy and
planning, code-switching, New Englishes, language and identity, and African lin-
guistics. He has published numerous articles in refereed journals and books, and is
the author of the monograph The Language Planning Situation in South Africa (2001),
co-editor of Language and Institution in Africa (2000), editor of special issues for
Multilingua 17 (1998), International Journal of the Sociology of Language 144 (2000),
World Englishes 21 (2002), and Language Problems and Language Planning 28 (2004)
and is Polity Editor for the series Current Issues in Language Planning.
Kendall A. King (University of Minnesota) is Professor of Second Languages

and Cultures Education and Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of
Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches and
conducts research on language policy, sociolinguistics and multilingualism. She has
held academic and research posts at New York University, Georgetown University,
and the Center for Research on Bilingualism at Stockholm University. She holds a
BA from the University of California, an MA in TESOL and a PhD in Educational
Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been widely pub-
lished in scholarly journals such as Applied Linguistics, Discourse Studies and Journal
of Language, Identity and Education, as well as in edited collections published by
Cambridge University Press, Routledge, Multilingual Matters and others. She is an
editor of the journal Language Policy.
Vicky Macleroy (Goldsmiths, University of London) is a Senior Lecturer in English

in Education in the Department of Educational Studies. Vicky’s expertise is in lan-
guage development and her doctorate research was in the area of multiliteracies and
applied linguistics. She is Head of the MA Writer/Teacher course, which is a joint pro-
gramme across the departments of Educational Studies and English and Comparative
Literature, and is a tutor on the new MA in Multilingualism, Linguistics and
Education programme. She is joint co-ordinator of the PGCE English programme
and a committee member of the Research Centre for Language, Culture and Learning
at Goldsmiths. She has co-directed with Jim Anderson a two-year project (2012–14)
on multilingual digital storytelling funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Ajit Mohanty (National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium) is Chief

Advisor within the National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium and, for-
merly, Professor and ICSSR National Fellow within Jawaharlal Nehru University. He
was a Fulbright Visiting Professor (Columbia University), Fulbright Senior Scholar
(University of Wisconsin), and Killam Scholar (University of Alberta). With over
ix Notes on contributors
140 publications including seven books in the areas of psycholinguistics, multilin-

gualism and multilingual education focusing on education, poverty and disadvan-
tage among linguistic minorities, he has written chapters on language acquisition
and bilingualism in the Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology (second edition) and
on multilingual education in India in Encyclopaedia of Language and Education and
in Encyclopaedia of Applied Linguistics, 2013, and is author of Multilingual Education
for Social Justice (Mohanty, Panda, Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas, eds). His other
books include Bilingualism in a Multilingual Society and Psychology of Poverty
and Disadvantage. He is a Fellow and past President of the National Academy of
Psychology, India, and a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science, USA.
He developed the Multilingual Education Policy for Nepal (with Tove Skutnabb-
Kangas) and also for the state of Odisha, India.
Martha Qorro (University of Dar es Salaam) is an Associate Professor in the

Centre for Communication Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM).
She obtained her Doctoral Degree at UDSM in 1999. In 1997 she and Dr. Zaline
Roy-Campbell co-authored Language Crisis in Tanzania: The Myth of English versus
Education, published by Mkuki na Nyota in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She has
also co-edited nine LOITASA books between 2002 and 2012. She was the Dean of
Students at UDSM from 2008 to 2012, and the Acting Director of the Confucius
Institute at UDSM between 2013 and 2014. Her research interests are language in
education, language in society and Children’s writing.
Minati Panda (Jawaharlal Nehru University) is a Professor and currently the

Chairperson in the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies. She is also the
Director of NMRC in JNU.
Thomas Ricento (University of Calgary) is Professor and Research Chair in English

as an Additional Language. Prior to his position in Canada, he was Professor of
Applied Linguistics, University of Texas, San Antonio. He has published widely in
the field of language policy, minority language education and English in a global
context. Recent publications include An Introduction to Language Policy (2005);
Political Economy and English as a ‘Global’ Language (Critical Multilingualism
Studies, 2012); Language Policy and Political Economy: English in a Global Context
(2015); Language Policy and Planning: Critical Concepts in Linguistics (forthcoming).
He is founding co-editor of the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education. He has
twice been a Fulbright Professor (Colombia and Costa Rica), and has been a visiting
professor at universities in Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Chile, among other
countries. He was Director of English Language Programmes at the Japan Center
for Michigan Universities, Hikone, Japan, 1989–91.
Farzad Sharifian (Monash University) is Professor and Director of Language and

Society. He is the author of Cultural Conceptualisations and Language (2011), the
(founding) Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Language and Culture,
x Notes on contributors
and the editor of The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture (2015). He has
made significant contributions to the development of Cultural Linguistics as a
multidisciplinary area of research. He has also applied the approach of Cultural
Linguistics to several areas of research, including World Englishes, intercultural
communication, and language and politics.
Carolyn Temple Adger (Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC) is a

Senior Fellow, and director of the Language Education and Academic Development
division and the Language in Society division. She holds a PhD in sociolinguistics
from Georgetown University and an MS in English education from the University of
Maryland. Her research has focused on language in education, including classroom
discourse and teachers’ professional talk. Her applied linguistics work has addressed
language and literacy learning in culturally diverse schools in the US, dialects in US
schools, and biliteracy in developing countries. She has published widely in these
areas, and has worked directly with teachers and others involved in educating lan-
guage-minority children. Her books include Dialects in Schools and Communities
(co-authored with Wolfram and Christian, 1999; second edition, 2007; third edition,
forthcoming), and What Teachers Need to Know About Language (co-edited with
Snow and Christian). She is a former teacher.
Viniti Vaish (Nanyang Technological University) is Associate Professor within

the university’s National Institute of Education. She teaches courses on bilingualism
and biliteracy and has published most recently in Cambridge Journal of Education,
International Journal of Multilingualism and Language and Education.
Lionel Wee (National University of Singapore) is a Professor in the Department

of English Language and Literature. He sits on the editorial boards of the Journal
of Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics, English World-Wide, Sociolinguistic Studies
and Multilingual Margins. His books include Language Without Rights (2011), Style,
Identity and Literacy (with Chris Stroud, 2011) and Markets of English (with Joseph
Park, 2012), Consumption, Rights and States: Comparing Global Cities in Asia and
the US (with Ann Brooks, 2014) and The Language of Organizational Styling (2015).
Androula Yiakoumetti (Oxford Brookes University) is an applied linguist whose

research focuses on regional and social variation within linguistic systems and,
more specifically, on the implications of such variation for education. She is inter-
ested in the sociolinguistic aspects of linguistic variation and works within the re-
search fields of multidialectism and multilingualism, second-language acquisition,
and language-teacher development. Her publications span a variety of language
issues including bidialectism, language attitudes, learning English as a foreign lan-
guage, and language-teacher training.
SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE
The manifold dimensions of the field of teacher education are increasingly

attracting the attention of researchers, educators, classroom practitioners
and policymakers, while awareness has also emerged of the blurred bound-
aries between these categories of stakeholders in the discipline. One notable
feature of contemporary theory, research and practice in this field is con-
sensus on the value of exploring the diversity of international experience for
understanding the dynamics of educational development and the desired
outcomes of teaching and learning. A second salient feature has been the
view that theory and policy development in this field need to be evidence-
driven and attentive to diversity of experience. Our aim in this series is to
give space to in-depth examination and critical discussion of educational de-
velopment in context with a particular focus on the role of the teacher and
of teacher education. While significant, disparate studies have appeared in
relation to specific areas of enquiry and activity, the Cambridge Education
Research Series provides a platform for contributing to international debate
by publishing within one overarching series monographs and edited collec-
tions by leading and emerging authors tackling innovative thinking, practice
and research in education.
The series consists of three strands of publication representing three fun-
damental perspectives. The Teacher Education strand focuses on a range of
issues and contexts and provides a re-examination of aspects of national and
international teacher education systems or analysis of contextual examples of
innovative practice in initial and continuing teacher education programmes
in different national settings. The International Education Reform strand
examines the global and country-specific moves to reform education and
xi
xii Series editors’ preface
particularly teacher development, which is now widely acknowledged as cen-

tral to educational systems development. Books published in the Language
Education strand address the multilingual context of education in different
national and international settings, critically examining among other phe-
nomena the first, second and foreign language ambitions of different na-
tional settings and innovative classroom pedagogies and language teacher
education approaches that take account of linguistic diversity.
We are very pleased to include Multilingualism and Language in Education:
Sociolinguistic and Pedagogical Perspectives from Commonwealth Countries in
our series as part of the collection of books framed within the language edu-
cation strand. It provides a timely stimulus for reflection on the importance
of research-informed understandings about linguistic and sociolinguistic di-
versity and on the need for context-sensitive educational policy-making to
take account of this diversity. The chapters in this volume remind us how,
beyond the rhetoric, the Commonwealth of Nations is dependent on a com-
mon wealth of languages.
Michael Evans and Colleen McLaughlin
xii
INTRODUCTION
Language policy and practice with a focus
on Commonwealth contexts
Androula Yiakoumetti (Oxford Brookes University, UK)
In a modern world characterised by globalisation, transnationalism, transmi-

gration and super-diversity, there exists a pressing need to critically examine
language in education, language policies, the role of English and linguistic
diversity. This volume explores language issues primarily in the linguis-
tically diverse settings of Commonwealth countries in an effort to provide
answers to the following question: in settings that are characterised by lan-
guage power relations based on economic and political factors rather than
linguistic processes, how can language education be optimised? Countries
within the Commonwealth furnish some of the most instructive instances of
languages that have been used as instruments of empowerment and oppres-
sion, cultural liberation, religious evangelism, and to unify, isolate and/or
separate ethnic groups. Indeed, language has been at the centre of most polit-
ical, historical, economic and educational decision-making in these linguis-
tically rich and complex settings.
This volume brings together work carried out in a number of Common-
wealth countries, including Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Ghana, India,
Jamaica, Malta, Singapore, Tanzania and the UK. In addition, to these
Commonwealth nations, two chapters draw on research carried out on
emergent bilingual learners (whose first language is not English) in the US.
The research discussed in these two chapters has profound relevance to the
great many Commonwealth contexts in which English is the language of
the majority.
The essays included here highlight the suggestions and practical efforts
undertaken in these contexts to incorporate linguistic diversity into edu-
cation and to promote multilingualism. The authors examine language in
xiii
xiv Androula Yiakoumetti
education and discuss both historical and current practices. They argue for
the promotion of Indigenous languages, minority languages, Creoles and
nonstandard varieties in formal education, and they discuss what works and
what does not. The authors’ recommendations reflect the enormous changes
that educational sociolinguistic research has brought about in the twenty-
first century: diglossic compartmentalisation that was at the heart of edu-
cational practices in the twentieth century is now called into question and
bilingual and multilingual practises in today’s globalised world are seen as
dynamic (García et al. 2012). As Pauwels (2014) argues, the linguistic phe-
nomena associated with super-diversity are resulting in a paradigm shift
in the study of multilingualism. Reflecting this shift, the majority of the
contributors question traditional nation-state ideologies and the idea that
multilinguals’ various languages should be treated as autonomous systems.
Instead, many focus on translanguaging practices and call for utilisation of
multilinguals’ entire linguistic repertoires in education.
The chapters are presented according to geographical context and adhere
to the following order: Africa, South Asia, Australia, the Caribbean and
North America, and Europe. Commencing with the sociolinguistic and lan-
guage education landscapes of African Commonwealth countries, Nkonko
Kamwangamalu focuses on the juxtaposition of English and African lan-
guages. He investigates the privileged status held by English compared to
African languages in educational systems and explains that a monolingual
model is prevalent which posits an early exit of African languages from edu-
cation in favour of English. In essence, subtractive bilingualism is widely
practiced in that African languages are used as media of instruction only
for the first three years of primary education; they are subsequently replaced
by English as the sole medium of instruction. Kamwangamalu suggests that
language-education planning needs a paradigm shift: rather than critiquing
inherited colonial policies, he proposes Prestige Planning for African lan-
guages. This proposal entails associating African languages with an eco-
nomic value on the labour market and requiring academic skills in these
languages for access to employment. The focus is on the reception (and not
on the production) of language planning.
Birgit Brock-Utne and Martha Qorro work within the context of multi-
lingual Tanzania. They are in direct agreement with Kamwangamalu’s sug-
gestion that African languages need to be associated with contexts which
are generally reserved for English. They focus on education and argue that
local languages are the most appropriate for use as languages of instruction
for early literacy. They acknowledge that the multiplicity of these languages,
the lack of teaching materials, and the need to train teachers to use these
xv Introduction
languages as media of instruction, are challenges that need to be overcome.

Nevertheless, education in African languages is the way forward if know-
ledge and skills are to be effectively disseminated to the wider public.
Echoing Brock-Utne’s and Qorro’s sentiments, Kingsley Arkorful and
Carolyn Temple Adger view the utilisation of local languages as integral to
successful language instruction in Ghana. The authors initially review the
educational language policy in Ghana and highlight that (i) only 11 out of
70 languages indigenous to Ghana are approved for use in formal school-
ing, and that (ii) the policy is non-committal when it comes to the use of a
Ghanaian language as the medium of instruction. They identify that, even
though a Ghanaian language is recommended as the medium of instruction
for early grades (P1–3), practically, English is the language of reading and
writing since all the books are written in English. They subsequently raise
a legitimate question about how children who speak languages other than
English can gain access to quality primary education when English main-
tains a superlative position. For the purposes of their empirical study, they
contrast state education to a complementary education programme known
as School for Life and conclude that the latter is vastly superior. The unique
characteristic of this programme is that the sole language of instruction is
Dagbani, and lesson content is culturally relevant. This programme is tes-
tament to the benefits of mother-tongue based education as, after just nine
months, graduates of the programme perform as well as students who have
completed three years of state schooling on standardised tests.
Ajit Mohanty and Minati Panda work within the sociolinguistic and
educational landscapes of India and focus on the language education of
tribal communities. They explain that India is a unique setting in that it is
the country with the highest number of endangered languages and also the
fourth most linguistically diverse country in the world. Individuals need
multiple languages as one is simply insufficient to meet the requirements
of the diverse community. Mohanty and Panda make the case that, com-
pared with their peers, tribal children face greater language challenges in the
school arena: because their mother tongue is not the language of instruction,
they have difficulty comprehending the school language (the dominant re-
gional or state language), and even more difficulty with English (the third
language). The reality that tribal children speak languages considered to have
low status has been linked to poor academic achievement which, ultimately,
produces and perpetuates poverty. This result is a consequence of a language
hierarchy in India which views English as the most preferred language in
education, followed by regional majority languages and, finally, ending with
Indigenous and tribal minority languages. The authors argue for the use of
xvi Androula Yiakoumetti
tribal languages as media of instruction and explain that, unless this hap-
pens, ensuring inclusive education and social equity, as envisaged in the
Commonwealth Charter, is clearly not on the horizon.
As can be seen from the first four chapters, concerns relating to the status
of English compared to that of local languages are common in both African
and Indian settings. The authors acknowledge that social and educational
changes ought to take place which would see local languages acquire a more
elevated status, but achieving such changes is no easy feat. Local languages
have historically been treated as unequal to English, but with careful plan-
ning, there is cause for hope that positive changes can be implemented.
Ritu Jain and Lionel Wee question the notion of language community
and critique the Singaporean language policy in relation to its treatment of
English and the Indian community’s various mother tongues. They highlight
the gap between stated government ideologies and those of the Indian com-
munity and make the case that the languages that the Indian population in
Singapore choose to adopt in education are based on Indians’ views of the
instrumental advantages of linguistic varieties and their own future trajec-
tories. For instance, many Indians choose to adopt Hindi (and not Tamil,
which is the officially recognised mother tongue of the Indian community)
because it is considered as a pan-Indian language (it is India’s official lan-
guage), and is thus associated with financial success and career development.
Community membership is a comparatively minor factor when it comes to
language-maintenance decisions as Indians make choices irrespective of their
own ethnic or linguistic affiliations. Importantly, the language preferences of
Singapore’s Indian community have required the government to reconsider
the position (which represented an erroneous generalisation) that Tamil is
the sole mother tongue of a notably heterogeneous Indian population.
Viniti Vaish also works within the Singaporean context but focuses on
Malay speakers to explore the role of students’ home language in the English
classroom. Via an intervention study, the performance of students who were
exposed to translanguaging practices (which involved students’ entire lin-
guistic repertoires) was compared with that of students who were exposed
solely to the target language, English. The findings clearly demonstrate the
benefits of the former approach: when students were scaffolded to utilise
their home language, the quantity of their speech as well as the number of
questions posed by them increased, and both teachers and students asked
more speculative questions. Vaish provides a well-contextualised empirical
demonstration that monolingual instruction for bilingual and multilingual
speakers is not as productive as instruction that harnesses the speakers’ en-
tire linguistic repertoires.
xvii Introduction
Looking at Australia, Farzad Sharifian focuses on the education of

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who speak Aboriginal English.
He suggests that teachers of such students ought to receive training in lan-
guage awareness so that they become familiar with key differences between
Australian Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English. A survey on
the health, wellbeing and education of Aboriginal English-speaking children
provides the basis for recommendations for deploying bidialectal learning
and teaching that acknowledges the symbolic representations of each variety.
He cautions that, frequently, Aboriginal students’ performance is misinter-
preted, and calls for the creation of alternative assessments that take into
account students’ entire linguistic repertoires.
Denise Angelo and Nina Carter provide a very rich picture of the complex
shifting ‘langscapes’ of Queensland, Australia. Echoing Farzad Sharifian, the
authors highlight the need for educators to acquire professional capacities
that counter stereotypical policy and social views towards Indigenous multi-
lingual students’ linguistic repertoires and overall learning in classrooms
that use Standard Australian English as the exclusive medium of instruc-
tion. They explain that the predominantly non-Indigenous education work-
force is mostly unprepared for teaching contact-language speakers. They
view language awareness, progression from the monolingual mindset (which
currently dominates), and acceptance of multilingual speakers’ relative profi-
ciencies in each of their languages to be integral factors that enable educators
to best support their students. Importantly, the authors note that the shifting
langscapes of Queensland are comparable to other Commonwealth contexts
were language-contact processes have resulted in various English-lexified
creoles and related varieties.
Producing remarkably similar recommendations, albeit in a markedly dif-
ferent context, Hubert Devonish, Paula Daley-Morris and Karen Carpenter
argue in favour of contact-language use in the education of Creole-speaking
Caribbean. In response to the Commonwealth Charter’s commitment to
equality and respect for the protection and promotion of cultural rights, the
authors ask how these rights could be promoted in contexts were the native
Creole is largely excluded from education. To critically evaluate Jamaican
school-based approaches to language education, they examine Jamaican
pupils’ writing samples in the texting medium and in the school English me-
dium. They demonstrate that, for texting, pupils employ Jamaican Creole
as a medium of written communication in a manner that visually distin-
guishes it from writing in school English. The authors favour bilingual in-
struction, which is currently unsupported by ministries of education across
the Caribbean, and conclude that the equity and justice issues raised by the
xviii Androula Yiakoumetti
Commonwealth Charter still need to be properly addressed in language edu-

cation policies and practices.
Thomas Ricento interrogates the current educational practices in Canada,
which fall short of fostering multilingualism and multiculturalism. The histor-
ical basis for the official hegemony (conveyed via exclusive federal recognition)
of English and French in a Canadian nation that is immensely multilingual
and multicultural is set out and serves as a salutatory lesson. The fact that, in
Canada, educational policy is primarily the responsibility of provinces and
territories and that there is no national educational policy and curriculum
creates a particular issue, one of problematic implementation of bilingual
programmes at national level, despite federal government support for bilin-
gualism and multiculturalism. A common and very undesirable outcome of
the current Canadian educational reality is that those who are neither natively
Anglophone nor Francophone find themselves marginalised.
Jessica Ball outlines how, in Canadian education, aspirations such as
those set out in the Commonwealth Charter and commitments to the
Millenium Development Goals are hollow without associated acknowledge-
ment and support for linguistic diversity in Canadian education. She dis-
cusses the valuable resource that the mother tongue of minority-language
speakers represents and argues for mother-tongue-based multilingual edu-
cation. Focusing on Indigenous languages, she argues that the time has come
to elevate them to equal standing alongside the existing colonial languages at
federal, provincial and territorial levels. The Canadian context provides con-
vincing evidence that only by granting this equal standing, and by allowing
children to learn in their mother tongues until they are fully literate, can the
aspirations of the Commonwealth Charter become a reality.
In a discussion of policy in the US that has implications for Commonwealth
contexts in which English is the essential language for academic success,
Jenna Cushing-Leubner and Kendall King undertake an examination of two
opposing policy frameworks implemented in California and New York that
are designed for students who are long-term English learners. They suggest
that the New York framework (which is more inclusive and which focuses on
integrative multilingualism) is more appropriate than the widely publicised
California framework. Their conclusion is to recommend those same trans-
languaging practices that are advocated in many other instances within this
volume.
Working within the theoretical frameworks of language management
and translanguaging and drawing on the practices of two teachers based
in New York, Ofelia García and Sarah Hesson investigate how students’
xix Introduction
translanguaging practices can be fostered and enhanced. The students are

seen as the language experts. This chapter highlights the key role of teachers
in managing students’ meaningful language learning and teaching via the
use of their entire language repertoires.
Jim Anderson and Vicky Macleroy focus on how multilingualism has
manifested itself in recent years in the UK. Due to enormous population
movement, the UK is an immensely multilingual setting. Its education, how-
ever, is dominated by monolingual assumptions. There is currently no official
educational provision for emergent bilingual students whose achievement is
measured on their English performance alone. The maintenance of commu-
nity languages is viewed as the responsibility of the minority communities
themselves, and they have resorted to running voluntary community-based
weekend schools. The authors emphasise that such schools are in opposition
to monolingual mainstream education as they celebrate bilingualism and bi-
lingual identity. The authors conclude by advising that future education pol-
icies should take into account speakers’ fluid identities.
Antoinette Camilleri Grima focuses on the sociolinguistic and educa-
tional landscapes of Malta and its sister island Gozo. Dialects on the island
of Malta have been declining in education and beyond, whereas dialects in
Gozo have remained vital. The author draws attention to the very interest-
ing setting of Gozo by explaining that, unlike many children worldwide
who speak a dialect at home that is different from the language of schooling,
Gozitan children perform above the national average. This is because dialects
in this specific setting are held in high esteem. This setting is very encour-
aging as it demonstrates that when dialects are highly regarded, they provide
their speakers with benefits associated with bilingualism.
In the final chapter, I focus on the sociolinguistic and educational land-
scapes of Cyprus and critique the most recent educational curriculum.
Although the new curriculum represents a promising step towards acknow-
ledging that the local Greek Cypriot dialect is a systematic variety, it still
fails to promote linguistic diversity in education. Minority languages do not
make an appearance and the educational language, the standard variety of
Greek, continues to be presented somewhat disingenuously as the students’
native variety.
Collectively, the authors of this volume acknowledge the mismatch be-
tween what should ideally happen in the classrooms of linguistically com-
plex settings such as those in the Commonwealth, and what policies have
traditionally prescribed. They show that the historical devaluation of non-
standard, Indigenous and minority linguistic varieties on the whole tends
xx Androula Yiakoumetti
to disadvantage those who have the greatest need for support and protection
within the educational system. Speakers of such low-status languages very
often have their languages and cultures threatened by power-associated lan-
guages and cultures (Yiakoumetti 2014). This threat undoubtedly perpetu-
ates hierarchical relationships.
Those authors who explore the role of English both in education and in so-
ciety at large conclude that, in some cases, access to English still remains tied
to class and social power. Of course, one cannot dismiss citizens’ aspirations
in contemporary postcolonial settings: it is not unreasonable for young citi-
zens to wish for their utilitarian expectations and desires for social empow-
erement to be met as they try to negotiate the complex forces of globalisation
(Roy 2014). At the same time, local languages ought to be preserved and cel-
ebrated as they are part of their identities. If local languages were to be associ-
ated with prestige along the lines suggested by Nkonko Kamwangamalu, the
solidification of the elite status of English would decelerate. English and local
languages could then co-exist harmoniously, and the social differences that re-
sult because of educational barriers would equilibrate. The resulting situation
would be one that reflects all the benefits associated with multilingualism.
The research from the diverse contexts reported herein demonstrates that
an education that promotes children’s mother tongues and cultural identities
is markedly more beneficial than an education that suppresses home lan-
guages and, consequently, perpetuates social injustice. Antoinette Camilleri
Grima’s account of the Gozitan dialects unquestionably establishes that when
dialects are valued and their use is not discouraged in education, they can
provide their speakers with additional benefits. Similarly, Kingsley Arkorful
and Carolyn Temple Adger show that, when children are educated in their
native Dagbani, their performance benefits. Finally, Viniti Vaish’s account
of Singaporean Malay-speaking students’ performance is proof that mother-
tongue based education is beneficial: students who were exposed to Malay in
education outperformed students who were exposed to English alone.
In answering the question of optimising language education in linguistic-
ally diverse settings, this volume shows that both low-status and tradition-
ally prestigious varieties ought to be concurrently used for ideal educational
outcomes, and therefore argues in favour of multilingualism and multicul-
turalism. Nkonko Kamwangamalu’s call for a paradigm shift in language edu-
cation planning is especially timely. The association of local languages, and not
just dominant languages, with economic and academic access would initiate a
process of mitigating perceived language inequalities. Only then would learn-
ers be in a position to trust education and to benefit maximally from it.
xxi Introduction
In spite of geographical and linguistic differences, Commonwealth nations

share strong democratic values relating to human rights and inclusiveness.
For the first time in its history, the Commonwealth has created a unitary
document: the Commonwealth Charter (2013). Affirming diversity, the
Commonwealth Charter outlines the core values of the organisation and the
aspirations of its members. The recent pledge by Commonwealth education
ministers to ensure that a strong Commonwealth voice informs and shapes
post-2015 global development goals (Commonwealth Secretariat 2012) dem-
onstrates the organisation’s willingness to foster better education based on
the principles of access, equity and quality.
This volume is timely: the authors make a clear and unequivocal case that
the aspirations set out in the Commonwealth Charter and the commitments
to the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals are entirely contingent
upon the concomitant delivery of the meaningful promotion of linguistic
diversity in education. If we are to make a change for the better, policy deci-
sion-makers will need to rethink education along the lines of social inclusion
for all. Given that education is perhaps the most critical venue for consoli-
dating linguistic ideology, consideration of language should be a first priority
when seeking change.
References
Commonwealth (2013). The Commonwealth Charter. London: The Stationery Office Limited.
Commonwealth Secretariat (2012). Commonwealth Ministerial Working Group on the Post-
2015 Development Framework for Education. London: Commonwealth Secretariat.
García, O., Flores, N. and Woodley, H. H. (2012). Transgressing Monolingualism and Bilingual
Dualities: Translanguaging Pedagogies. In A. Yiakoumetti, ed, Harnessing Linguistic
Variation to Improve Education. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang.
Pauwels, A. (2014) The Teaching of Languages at University in the Context of Super-diversity.
International Journal of Multilingualism 11 (3), 307–19.
Roy, S. (2014). Pedagogic Predicament. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial
Studies.
Yiakoumetti, A. (2014). Language Education in Our Globalised Classrooms: Recommen-
dations on Providing for Equal Language Rights. In E. Esch and M. Solly, eds, Language
Education and the Challenges of Globalisation: Sociolinguistic Issues. Cambridge:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
PART ONE:
Africa
1
THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC AND LANGUAGE
EDUCATION LANDSCAPES OF AFRICAN
COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES1
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu (Howard University, USA)
Introduction
Commenting on the relationship between colonial powers and their former

colonies, Fishman (1996, 5) says that ‘although the lowering of one flag and
the raising of another may indicate the end of colonial status, these acts do
not necessarily indicate the end of imperialist privilege in neo-colonial dis-
guise’. There is perhaps no better evidence of this than the privileged status
and role of English vis-à-vis African languages in the educational systems of
African Commonwealth countries. Although British colonial rule in Africa
ended over 50 years ago, African Commonwealth countries continue to put
the former colonial language, English, on a pedestal, especially in education.
This chapter discusses the dominance of English in education against the lin-
guistic diversity that is characteristic of African Commonwealth countries.
First, it describes the sociolinguistic and language education landscapes
of these countries. Then it contrasts the position of English in education in
African Commonwealth countries with its position in the educational systems
of European countries. Drawing on the literature, it shows that European coun-
tries use language ecology or the ‘English-Plus’ model particularly in secondary
education (Seidlhofer, Breiteneder and Pitzl 2006). Unlike those in Europe,
African Commonwealth countries practice a monolingual model, which pos-
its an early exit of African languages from the education system in favour of
English. In the subsequent section, the chapter discusses the ideologies that
underpin language-in-education practices in African Commonwealth coun-
tries, with a focus on the ideology of the nation-state and the ideology of socio-
economic development. I argue that these ideologies, though arguably dated
1
2 Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu
in Europe, continue to inform language practices in the educational systems

of Commonwealth countries. In the next and final section, the chapter sug-
gests ways in which English and African languages can co-exist productively
in education. In particular, it calls for Prestige Planning (Haarmann 1990) for
African languages not only to promote linguistic diversity in education but
also, and more importantly, to ensure that African languages become, like
English, a viable medium of instruction and an instrument of upward social
mobility.
The call for Prestige Planning for African languages is made against the
background of theoretical developments in language economics (Grin 1996;
Vaillancourt and Grin 2000). This is a field of study whose focus is on the
interplay between linguistic and economic variables. Understanding this
interplay, remark Grin, Sfreddo and Vaillaincourt (2010, 140) in the context of
language practices in the corporate sector, ‘is relevant to language policy, since
this understanding sheds light on why multinational firms, for instance, require
foreign language skills’. In the context of African Commonwealth countries,
understanding this relationship between linguistic and economic variables can
help us explain why there is such a high demand for English language skills but
virtually none for African languages on Africa’s labour market.
There is, therefore, arguably no field of study that is better equipped than
language economics to explain the dominance of English in the educational
systems of African Commonwealth countries. Within the framework of lan-
guage economics, linguistic products such as language, language varieties,
utterances and accents are seen not only as goods or commodities to which
the market assigns a value, but as signs of wealth or capital, which receive their
value only in relation to a market characterised by a particular law of price for-
mation (Bourdieu 1991, 66–7). The market value of a linguistic capital such as
language is determined in relation to other linguistic products in the planetary
economy (Coulmas 1992, 77–85). It is, as Gideon Strauss (1996, 9) notes, an
index of the functional appreciation of the language by the relevant community.
I argue that until African languages are associated with a market value, English
will continue to dominate the educational systems of African Commonwealth
countries, much as it did in the colonial era. But how can African languages be
assigned a market value to make them instrumentally competitive with English
at least on the local labour market? I will address this question in the last sec-
tion of this chapter, where I propose Prestige Planning for African languages.
But first, let us look at linguistic diversity in African Commonwealth countries
to provide the background against which the proposal of Prestige Planning for
African languages will be made.
3 The sociolinguistc and language education landscapes of African Commonwealth countries
Linguistic diversity and the linguistic landscapes of African

Commonwealth countries
There are 16 former British colonies in Africa. In addition, three African coun-
tries with no colonial ties to Britain, namely Namibia (1990), Mozambique
(1995) and most recently Rwanda (2009), have become members of the asso-
ciation of Commonwealth countries. One original member state, Zimbabwe,
left the association in 2003 due to land-related policy differences with Britain.
Aside from Rwanda, Lesotho and Swaziland, all African Commonwealth
countries are multilingual. In other words, linguistic diversity is a given in
these countries, much as it is in the rest of Africa and elsewhere in the world.
This diversity, however, is not reflected in the educational systems of African
Commonwealth countries, let alone the educational systems in the African
continent as a whole.
Table 1: The linguistic landscape of African Commonwealth countries2
S/N Names Population (2011) Number of Official languages

languages
spoken
1 Botswana 2 031 000 29 Setswana, English

2 Cameroon 20 030 000 280 French, English
3 Ghana 24 966 000 81 English
4 Kenya 41 610 000 67 Kiswahili, English
5 Lesotho 2 194 000 5 Sesotho, English
6 Malawi 15 381 000 16 English and Chicewa3
7 Mauritius 1 307 000 7 English
8 Mozambique 23 930 000 43 Portuguese
9 Namibia 2 324 000 30 English
10 Nigeria 162 471 000 522 English
11 Rwanda 10 943 000 3 Kinyarwanda, English
12 Seychelles 87 000 3 Creole, English, French
13 Sierra Leone 5 997 000 25 English
14 South Africa 50 460 000 28 Afrikaans, English, Zulu,
Xhosa, Swati, Sotho, Tsonga,
Tswana, Venda, Northern
Sotho, Southern Ndebele
15 Swaziland 1 203 000 5 siSwati, English
16 Tanzania 46 218 000 126 Kiswahili, English
17 Uganda 34 509 000 41 English, Kiswahili
18 Zambia 13 475 000 46 English
On the contrary, and despite the post-independence euphoria to promote lin-

guistic diversity in education, English-medium education remains the norm
in African Commonwealth countries. This is because African Commonwealth
countries perceive linguistic diversity as a curse, or what Davies (1996), fol-
lowing the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, describes as the fatality of
Babel. According to this story, the descendants of Noah tried to build a tower
leading to heaven, but their attempt ended in chaos when God confused the
common language that enabled them to communicate and punished them
by making them speak many different languages. As Muhlhausler (1996)
observes, this story portraying linguistic diversity as divine punishment has
dominated western thinking for centuries; with many people, including poli-
cymakers in former European colonies in Africa, believing that a multipli-
city of languages is a problem. To address this problem, the African elite to
whom power passed when colonialism ended have retained the former colonial
language, English, as the sole medium of instruction in their respective coun-
tries’ educational systems. It is explained that English was retained because of
what Blommaert (1996, 21) calls the ‘the efficiency argument’. In essence, the
efficiency argument posits multilingualism as a problem that must be avoided at
all costs to ensure the smooth running of the business of the state and promote
national integration and economic development.
The efficiency argument can perhaps be entertained for multilingual
African Commonwealth countries such as Nigeria, Cameroon and Tanzania,
for instance, which have over a hundred languages spoken within their
borders. However, the argument does not hold for monolingual African
Commonwealth countries such as Swaziland, Lesotho and Rwanda, whose
population is linguistically homogeneous. In Swaziland, Lesotho and
Rwanda, everyone speaks only one Indigenous language, namely Siswati,
Sesotho and Kinyarwanda, respectively. Therefore, drawing on Fardon and
Furniss (1994), Blommaert argues convincingly that the efficiency argument
is flawed. In particular, Blommaert quotes Fardon and Furniss (1994, 4), who
say that
whereas the former colonial powers strongly advocated efficiency among their
former colonies, they now struggle hard to keep the European Union as multi-
lingual as can be. Multilingualism in Europe is cherished as part of the unique
European heritage, while it is depicted in Africa as one of the causes of under-
development and chaos.
In the next section, I will contrast the position of English in the educational
systems of European countries with its position in the educational systems of
African Commonwealth countries. The literature shows that European coun-

tries value and promote linguistic diversity by using additive bilingualism
consisting of a national language and English. Hoffmann (2000) notes that in
Germany, for instance, from the 1980s onwards, a growing number of schools
use a form of bilingual education with German and English, referred to as
Bilinguale Züge, where the children receive part of their lessons in English
to meet the demands of economic globalisation. Unlike European countries,
African Commonwealth countries practice subtractive bilingualism by using
African languages as the medium of instruction only for the first three years
of primary education, after which English takes over as the sole instructional
medium.
Linguistic diversity in African Commonwealth countries and Europe
As a result of the British colonial legacy, English dominates the educational

systems of virtually all African Commonwealth countries. Bamgbose (2000)
refers to this as a recurring decimal; that is, English turns up everywhere and
dominates all the high-status domains, and certainly none more so than edu-
cation. English is a recurring decimal not only in the educational systems
of African Commonwealth countries but also in education in Europe. In
their discussion of the spread of English in Europe, Seidlhofer, Breiteneder
and Pitzl (2006, 3) remark that ‘English is everywhere, and we cannot avoid
it. Whether chosen or mandatory, English is unquestionably the dominant
language in secondary education.’ English dominates in Europe, much as it
does in virtually all African Commonwealth countries, because of the in-
strumental value with which it is associated in the labour market, both local
and global. The difference between the position of English in Europe and
Africa is that, unlike African Commonwealth countries, in their educational
systems the member states of the European Union use English in addition
to rather than at the expense of their national languages. Indeed, one is not
oblivious of the point that Hoffman (2000, 20) has made, namely that ‘in order
to partake in Europe, i.e. both contribute to and benefit from the European
Union politically, economically and socially, it is now highly desirable to
have English’. In this regard, Seidlhofer, Breiteneder and Pitzl (2006) describe
language practices in the European Union as an irresolvable dilemma. In
particular, they remark that ‘in order to have a sense of community, a com-
mon language is needed, but having a common language is seen as a threat
to European multilingualism. How can one promote a common language for
the community while supporting equal rights for all community languages
at the same time?’ (Seidlhofer, Breiteneder and Pitzl 2006, 24).
In spite of this apparent dilemma, it must be said that the European Union,
the most influential institution in Europe, has taken many policy decisions
since its creation on November 1, 1993 to ensure that no European language
is discriminated against in the working of the Union. Phillipson (2003) lists
a number of policies adopted by the European Union to promote linguistic
diversity within its borders. These include, among others, the June 1995
European Council conclusions on Linguistic diversity and multilingualism
in the European Union; the November 2001 Draft Council Resolution on the
promotion of linguistic diversity and language-learning in the framework of
the implementation of the objectives of the European Year of Languages; The
January 2000 Declaration of Oegstgeest (the Netherlands) entitled ‘Moving
away from a monolingual habitus’ and the June 2001 Vienna Manifesto on
European Language Policies entitled ‘The cost of monolingualism’. In the
1995 European Council conclusions, for instance, the Council affirms the
importance for the European Union of its linguistic diversity, which it says
is an essential aspect of the European dimension and identity, and of the
common cultural heritage. Also, it describes linguistic diversity as a source
of employment, an asset for the Union’s influence in the outside world, and
a resource that must be preserved and promoted in the Union (Phillipson
2003, 193).
There are other indicators that Europe has made every effort to accommo-
date its linguistic diversity. More recently, in 2010, the Linguist List (vol. 21,
no. 736) announced the launch of meridium – Multilingualism in Europe
as a Resource for Immigration Dialogue Initiative among the Universities
of the Mediterranean. This was an international three-year project based
at the University for Foreigners in Perugia, Italy, the aim of which was to
study multilingualism in Mediterranean Europe and to raise an awareness
of multilingualism and linguistic diversity.
The world has also taken notice of the fact that linguistic diversity is a feature
of almost every country. Robinson and Varley (1998) list a number of confer-
ences held in various parts of the world to promote linguistic diversity. Some
of these include the 1996 Barcelona conference on Universal Declaration of
Linguistic Rights; the June 1996 Hong Kong conference on language rights;
and the 1995 Cameroon national conference on education, which sought to
establish the principle that mother tongue of pupils should have a place in
the educational system, to name a few. African Commonwealth countries are
yet to come to terms with and promote linguistic diversity, especially in their
educational systems. I argue that failure to do so has its roots in the language
ideologies the countries inherited from the former colonial power, Britain. In
the next section, I will discuss two of these ideologies, namely the ideology of
the nation-state and the ideology of socio-economic development.
Colonial ideologies, language-in-education practices and linguistic diversity
The ideology of the nation-state

Schmidt (1998) has proposed a set of language policies including one, which
he calls centralist policy, that might help us understand language-in-educa-
tion practices in African Commonwealth countries both in the colonial as
well as post-colonial era. A centralist policy has its roots in the ideology of
the nation-state, which was popular in Europe at the time European powers
conquered and divided up the African continent among themselves at the
Berlin Conference of 1884–5 (Kamwangamalu 2013a, 546).
Inspired by the ideology of the nation-state, which by definition requires
unitary symbols, among them ‘one nation’, ‘one language’, ‘one culture’, ‘one
belief system’, ‘one religion’ and so on, the colonial authorities designed lan-
guage policies that embraced monolingualism in a European language as the
norm, treated the diversity of African languages as a problem and a threat to
social order, and considered the African languages themselves as inadequate
for advanced learning and socio-economic development (Whitehead 1995).
This is evident from the following quote by Sir Stanley River-Smith, who
was Director of Education in the former British territory of Tanganyika, now
Tanzania:
The vast majority of African dialects . . . must be looked upon as educational cul
de sacs [sic] . . . From a purely educational standpoint the decent internment of
the vast majority of African dialects is to be desired, as they can never give the
tribal unit access to any but a very limited literature (Whitehead 1995, 7). ‘To
limit a native to a knowledge of his tribal dialects is to burden him with an eco-
nomic handicap under which he will always be at a disadvantage when compared
with others who, on account of geographical distribution or by means of educa-
tion, are able to hold intercourse with Europeans or Asiatics’ (Whitehead 1995, 8).
Ager (2005) says that British authorities had contempt for linguistic diver-
sity both at home and in their colonies overseas. With regard to the colonies,
Ager says that British authorities held the view that no African was good
enough to become English; however, unlike the Germans, who believed that
no African was good enough to learn German; or the French, who believed
that no African was civilised unless they gave up their languages and assimi-
lated the French language, the British thought that there was some virtue
in Africans being minimally anglicised (Mazrui 2013, 140). Accordingly,
British authorities chose to train an elite in English who would provide a
link between the rulers and the ruled (Bamgbose 2000). Also, they commit-
ted resources to the codification and promotion of Swahili in East Africa.
As a result, Kiswahili and English in Kenya, for instance, played a comple-
mentary role in official institutions of the state, with English dominating the
higher levels of colonial administration and Kiswahili the lower administra-
tive levels (Mazrui 2013). However, as Ager (2005, 1047) notes, ‘the thought
never entered anyone’s head that the higher public domains could use any-
thing other than English, that education could use any language other than
English, or that training in English as the language of the elite should not
receive the highest prestige.’
The ideology of the nation-state, though arguably dated in Europe,
continues to inform national language-in-education policies in African
Commonwealth countries, much as does the related ideology, that of socio-
economic development, to which I now turn.
The ideology of socio-economic development

The ideology of socio-economic development is the belief that development
in all its forms (social, political, economic) is possible only through the me-
dium of a former colonial language, in this case English. The ideology of de-
velopment, based as it is on the rationalist model since it uses the nation-state
as its quintessential goal, was transplanted into the territories that Britain
colonised in Africa and elsewhere. It continues to inform language policy
decision-making in postcolonial societies, and in Africa in particular, as is
evident from language practices in education in African Commonwealth
countries. Here, English dominates. In most of these countries, English is
used as instructional medium from nursery school throughout the remainder
of the educational system, including primary, secondary and tertiary educa-
tion. In this regard, the Ugandan linguist Kwesiga (1994) remarks sarcas-
tically that African mothers who have knowledge of this much-sought-after
language start teaching their children English before they are born.
Drawing on the colonial ideals about language and development, African
elites have perpetuated the colonial myth that development is possible only
through the medium of an international language, in this case English; and
that African languages are good only for preserving African cultures and
traditions. Thus, as Woolard and Schieffelin (1994, 63) observe, ‘the model
of development is pervasive in post-colonial language planning, with para-
doxical ideological implications that condemn languages, like societies, to
perennial status as underdeveloped’. Contrary to the colonial ideals about
language and development and the ideology of the nation-state with which
they are associated, linguistic scholarship has shown conclusively that the
notion that some languages inhibit intellectual or economic development is
a myth. Tollefson (1991), for example, argues that although the languages of
the colonised people are typically described as subordinate and traditional,
and lacking higher literary forms, these assessments of value must be under-
stood as reflections of relationships of power and domination rather than
objective linguistic or historical facts.
On this view, Robinson and Varley (1998, 191) make the important point
that language planners and policy-makers are typically motivated by efforts
to secure or maintain their own interests. In other words, language pol-
icies and their outcomes are designed by vested interests and ultimately
benefit those who are in power. Along these lines, Nekvapil and Nekula
(2006, 311) point out that the interests of different participants and social
groups in language planning situations are not identical and that the distri-
bution of power among them is uneven. As Fishman (1994, 92) puts it, ‘lan-
guage planning is . . . often disguised in the garb of ethno-national ideals
and related to the righting of past wrongs, but these appeals are often mere
‘cover ups’ for the fact that those who advocate, conduct and implement lan-
guage planning themselves have class, ethnic, political or religious interests
which stand to benefit from the success of the language planning under-
taken . . .’ Against this background, I raise the question: how can African
Commonwealth countries break away from current hegemonic language
practices in education, which marginalise African languages and favour
English as the sole medium of instruction in the schools? In the following
and final section, I argue that research into this question needs a paradigm
shift, one that goes beyond critiquing the wrongs of colonialism and inher-
ited colonial policies, for the criticism alone does not change the power re-
lationship between African languages and English. Instead, I will propose
Prestige Planning for African languages if these languages are to become,
like English, an instrument of upward social mobility for their speakers and
potential users.
The case for Prestige Planning for African languages
Traditionally, efforts to address language problems in Africa have concen-

trated on either status planning or corpus planning. Status planning has to
do with regulating the power relationship between languages and their re-
spective speakers in what Bourdieu (1991) has termed ‘the linguistic market
place’; that is, the social context in which language is used. Corpus planning
involves attempts to define or reform the standard language by changing
or introducing forms of spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar
(Fishman 1983). Haarmann (1990) argues that in addition to the status plan-
ning/corpus planning distinction, a separate category of language planning,
which he calls prestige planning, must be distinguished. This is because, in
Haarmann’s view, prestige planning does not depend on activities in the
ranges of corpus or status planning. He says that prestige planning is con-
cerned with raising the status of a language vis-à-vis other languages in
society so that members of the targeted speech community have a positive
attitude towards it. Haarmann (1990, 105) distinguishes between prestige as
associated with the production of language planning and prestige as related
to the reception of language planning. He goes on to say that prestige plan-
ning, whether corpus- or status-related, has to attract positive values to guar-
antee a favourable engagement on the part of the planners – producers of
language planning – and, moreover, on the part of those who are supposed
to use the planned language – the receivers of language planning (1990, 104).
Ager (2005) links prestige with image planning and argues that the prestige
allocated by a community to a language forms part of the image the com-
munity has of itself – part of its attitudinal structure. Since both prestige
and image are psychological attitudes, Ager says that attitudes need to be
changed if planning is to be successful. He does not, however, explain how
attitudes can be changed for planning to succeed.
In this chapter, I argue that the stakeholders’ negative attitudes towards
African languages may change if these languages are associated with an eco-
nomic value in the linguistic marketplace. On this view, Canagarajah and
Ashraf (2013, 268) note pointedly that when local languages do not have im-
portance for tertiary education or, it must be said, for education in general,
‘this reduces the motivation among students and families to learn languages
other than English’. They comment further that ‘if parents and students see
little or no functionality for less privileged languages, they will gradually veer
toward the languages with more capital’ (Canagarajah and Ashraf 2013, 269).
Along these lines, Coupland (2013) argues, rightly, that the decisions that
people make to invest in certain languages or leave them behind is a func-

tion of the utility with which the languages are associated. In other words,
‘individuals invest in language skills for their children or themselves accord-
ing to the benefits and costs associated with these investments’ (Vaillancourt
1996, 81). The ideas summarised in this paragraph are useful in two signifi-
cant ways. One, they offer the lens through which we can understand why
the populations of African Commonwealth countries favour English over
African languages as the medium of instruction in the schools. Two, with
this understanding, we can explore ways in which English and African lan-
guages can coexist productively in education for the benefit of all rather than
just for the elite.
Towards framing Prestige Planning for African languages
The majority of African Commonwealth countries became independent

states in the early 1960s and have since engaged with the production of lan-
guage planning, but hardly with the reception of language planning. The latter
aims at positively influencing language behaviour and the attitudes of the
speech community towards the target language. Traditionally, production of
language planning in the African context has consisted only in elevating the
status of selected Indigenous languages by recognising them as official lan-
guages of the state, but not allowing them to be used in the higher domains
such as education, which remain the exclusive preserve of the former colo-
nial language, English. South Africa, for instance, has given official recogni-
tion to nine African languages, as indicated in the table; while other African
Commonwealth countries have given recognition to one African language
only: Bemba in Zambia, Swati in Swaziland, Sotho in Lesotho, Swahili in
Kenya and Tanzania. However, no scholar suggests that giving official status
to one or more Indigenous languages to bring them to equality with English
necessarily results in or has ever resulted in prestige status for the target lan-
guages. As Ager (2005, 1037) notes pointedly, ‘planning that does not influ-
ence behaviour, that does not convince hearts and minds of the target of
planning, is pointless, no matter how well researched’.
To resolve the tension between language-in-education policy and practice,
some scholars have suggested that language planners should adopt a pluri-
lingual model indigenous to the region concerned (Canagarajah and Ashraf
2013, 258). More specifically, it is argued that rather than compartmentalising
languages and demanding equal competencies in each of them, such a model
would allow for functional competencies in complementary languages for

different purposes and social domains, without neglecting mother-tongue
maintenance. The issue, as I see it, is not so much whether languages should
be compartmentalised, but rather what outcomes would result from the pro-
posed compartmentalisation.
Against this background, I propose that for prestige planning for African
languages to succeed, it must meet at least two conditions. First, a market
must be created for these languages to raise awareness of their value on the
labour market. In other words, individuals who are interested in learning
or being schooled through the medium of an African language must know
what that education will do for them in terms of upward social mobility. Will
it, for instance, be as rewarding as an education through the medium of an
ex-colonial language such as English? I argue that the response to these ques-
tions lies in the relationship between language and economic returns. This
explains, following Grin (1999, 16), ‘why people learn certain languages and
why, if they have the choice of using more than one, they prefer to use one or
the other’. As economists would say, individuals respond to incentives and
seek to acquire those language skills whose expected financial benefits ex-
ceed their expected costs (Bloom and Grenier 1996, 46–7). Once policymak-
ers have created a market for the Indigenous languages, that is, once they
have made the consumers aware of the benefits of vernacular-medium edu-
cation and of the demand for skills in these languages on the labour market,
the consumers are more likely to develop a positive attitude towards vernac-
ular-medium education than they are at the moment.
Second, certified skills or knowledge, that is, school-acquired knowledge
of African languages, must become one of the criteria for access to employ-
ment in the public and private sector, much as is the case for English skills in
virtually all African Commonwealth countries. It is important to note that
the British themselves and the Dutch and the Afrikaners imposed similar
criteria in South Africa during their respective reign in that country, or what
Kamwangamalu (2003) refers to as the era of Dutchification (1652–1795),
Anglicization (1795–1803, 1806–1948), and Afrikanerization (1948–94). These
were times when the Dutch, the British and the Afrikaners required know-
ledge of their respective languages, Dutch, English and Afrikaans for access
to employment and whatever resources were available in the country. Thus,
the value of English or of any language for that matter depends mostly not so
much on ‘who is using it and in what context’ (Ricento 2013, 134), but rather
on the ends for which it is used.
It follows that because of the ends to which it is used, English has a higher
market value and more privileged status than local languages in the national
curricula in virtually all African Commonwealth countries (Kamwangamalu
2000, 59), and proficiency in it serves as a marker of socio-economic class
(Ricento 2013). It is not surprising that in their study of language-in-educa-
tion practices in South Africa, for instance, Rudwick and Parmegiani (2013)
found that English has more value than the other official languages as the
medium of instruction. In particular, Rudwick and Parmegiani report that
when asked about her preference for English over Zulu as the medium of in-
struction, one participant in the study said that ‘Zulu is as important as all
other languages, but then, with English being the language that you need
to succeed as a person, it’s better to learn in English’. Another participant
described the preference for English as ‘going with the flow’: ‘The circum-
stances under which our country (South Africa) is right now force us to go
with the flow. The flow is English. You can’t stop the flow. Even Zulu teachers
send their children to Model C schools.’ Yet another participant raised the
question: ‘Where would I be employed with my Zulu degree in the world?
Maybe in government, but I don’t know of a single department where I can
only speak isiZulu’ (Rudwick and Parmegiani 2013, 102).
Conclusion
I will conclude this chapter by sharing the experience I had recently at Moi
University in Eldoret, Kenya, where I delivered a paper proposing prestige
planning for the Indigenous lingua franca, Kiswahili. One member of the
audience reacted to the proposal as follows:
Professor, what you are proposing will not work. Let us move on. English has
brought us development; it has brought us jobs; it has brought us education; it has
brought us literacy; but what have African languages done for us? Nothing! Let us
just move on! (Kamwangamalu 2013b)
This reaction sums up the elite’s attitude towards African languages vis-à-vis
English and current language practices in the educational systems of African
Commonwealth countries. ‘Moving on’ simply means using English as the
sole medium of instruction in the schools. And yet, despite the early intro-
duction of English into the education system and the resources invested in its
promotion, there have been numerous claims of ‘falling standards’ of English
in the educational institutions of most African Commonwealth countries,
including Kenya (Mazrui 1997). Samuels (1995, 31), for instance, reports
that only a small percentage – between 5% and 20% – of the population in the
Commonwealth region can communicate in English.
Regarding Kenya, Mazrui (2013) quotes Professor Japheth Kiptoo, then
vice-chancellor of one of Kenya’s universities, Egerton University, as saying
that ‘many undergraduate students in that country’s public universities are
functionally illiterate in English and could not even write a simple applica-
tion for a job in the language’ (Mazrui 2013, 149). In a related study, Balfour
(1999) reported that 80% of Black South Africans and about 40% of Whites are
illiterate and innumerate at Standard Five level (i.e. grade 7). In Uganda and
Nigeria, Muthwii and Kioko (2003) note that only about 15% of the popula-
tion have functional literacy in the official language, English.
It is worth asking, then, whether it is pedagogically justified to continue
investing in an education through the medium of English only (Djite 2008),
or what Coulmas (1992, 149) rightly describes as a ‘monolingual, elitist
system’, even if that education, practiced for over 200 years, has failed to
spread literacy among the populations in African Commonwealth countries.
To change this state of affairs, I have proposed prestige planning for African
languages if these languages are to become, like English, an instrument of
upward social mobility. The proposal is made in light of theoretical develop-
ments in language economics (Grin 1996; Grin, Vaillancourt, Sfreddo 2010).
It entails associating African languages with an economic value on the la-
bour market and requiring academic skills in these languages as one of the
criteria for access to employment. Since all past prestige planning activities
in African Commonwealth countries have concentrated only on the produc-
tion of language planning, the prestige planning model being proposed in
this chapter requires that the focus be on the reception of language plan-
ning. Put differently, the model of prestige planning is intended to change
the hearts and behaviours of the target language community with the aim
to promote linguistic diversity involving English and African languages in
education. Also, the model of prestige planning for African languages aims
to challenge the ideology of the nation-state and of socio-economic develop-
ment that African Commonwealth countries have inherited from the former
colonial power, Britain. As already noted, both ideologies not only presume
that socio-economic development is possible purely through the medium of
a western language, in this case English, but also cast African languages as a
primitive obstacle to development.
It is ironic that English was also once described as a primitive language.
Loonen (1996) writes that some 400 years ago, English was experienced by
many as useless, inferior, even ugly and very insular: ‘English will do you
good in England, but past Dover it is worth nothing’, wrote John Florio in
First Frutes (1578) (Loonen 1996, 3). Loonen goes on to say that ‘English
was ranked among the basest of languages, characterised as a confused and
depraved mixture, indeed the dregs and dross of all European languages;
considered by many to be imbecile and inferior, a language no man can make
sense of and fit to poison cats and dogs’ (Loonen 1996, 3–4). Today, English
has left all of these negative attributes behind and has become a global com-
modity. African languages may not achieve the glory that English has expe-
rienced, but if prestige planning for these languages can make them valuable
at least on the local labour market, then the elite in African Commonwealth
countries will have made a big leap in the right direction. It remains to be
seen, however, whether the elite will move on with English alone, or whether
they will take African languages along. If they do choose to move on with
English alone, then the language will continue to serve, as Graddol (2006,
38) describes it and warns in his book English Next, as ‘one of the mecha-
nisms for structuring inequality in developing economies’, including African
Commonwealth countries.
Notes
1 An earlier version of this chapter was presented as a keynote address to the conference
‘English in Business and Commerce: Interactions and Policies’. Charles University,
Prague, Czech Republic, 21–2 March 2014.
2 The information for the table was culled from the following sources:
Population:
The Commonwealth Homepage – www.thecommonwealth.org/member-countries
Official Languages:
The Commonwealth Homepage – www.thecommonwealth.org/member-countries
Ethnologue:
The Languages of the World – www.ethnologue.com/browse/countries
3 In the Commonwealth homepage, English is listed as the only official language in
Malawi; but The Statesman’s Year Book 2014, edited by Barry Turner, shows that the
country has two official languages, English and Chichewa, as indicated in the table.
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2 MULTILINGUALISM AND LANGUAGE IN
EDUCATION IN TANZANIA
Birgit Brock-Utne (University of Oslo, Norway) and Martha A. S. Qorro
(University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)
Introduction
We are committed to equality and respect for the protection and promotion
of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to
development, for all without discrimination on any grounds as the foundations of
peaceful, just and stable societies. (The Commonwealth Charter 2012)
These words from the Commonwealth Charter point at a Commonwealth

bent on promoting cultural rights. Among those rights is the right to lan-
guage and the right to use a familiar language as the language of instruction.
When the Charter goes against discrimination on any grounds, it must also
include discrimination because of the language a person speaks and feels at
home with.
Tanzania is a multilingual country with a unique situation in Africa
whereby, in addition to numerous ethnic community languages (ECLs),
there is Kiswahili, a lingua franca spoken by an estimated 95% or more of
the population. Kiswahili is one of the two official languages in Tanzania,
English is the other official language, spoken by less than 5% in the country.
The growth of Kiswahili
Few people are aware of the fact that the Germans used Kiswahili as the
language of government administration, promoted its use as the medium of
instruction in schools, and transliterated Kiswahili from the Arabic script
19
20 Birgit Brock-Utne and Martha A. S. Qorro
to the Roman alphabet (Kurtz 1972, here taken from Puja 2003). They did so
mainly because they did not think that Tanganyikans could learn to speak
German well enough to use it as a language of instruction (see Brock-Utne
2000, 176). Although Kiswahili was also used as a language of administration
during British rule, the British promoted the use of English as a medium of
instruction in schools and as an official language in Tanganyika. The follow-
ing quote is an example of an unsuccessful effort to eliminate Kiswahili as a
lingua franca in Tanganyika:
The existence of Swahili in Tanganyika and its place in school teaching is unfor-
tunate for it seems to have affected adversely the teaching of both vernacular and
English . . . We suggest, therefore, that because the present teaching of Swahili
stands in the way of the strong development of both the vernacular and English
teaching, a policy should be followed which leads to its eventual elimination from
all schools where it is taught as lingua franca. (A recommendation by the Binns
Mission report published in 1953, and quoted by Cameron and Dodd 1970, 110.)
At this time Kiswahili was already widely spoken in Tanzania and was the
language of instruction in the first years of primary school. The first President
of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, took a completely different stand to that of the
Binns Mission on the language issue. During the struggle for independence,
the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) under Nyerere’s leadership
used Kiswahili to mobilise Tanganyikans against colonial rule.
Kiswahili enters the 1962 constitution of Tanganyika
The 1962 constitution of Tanganyika put Kiswahili more firmly on the map.
It declared: ‘The languages of Tanganyika are English and Kiswahili’. And
on 8 December 1962, President Julius Nyerere for the first time addressed
Parliament in Kiswahili. Referencing this event, Saida Yahya-Othman and
Herman Batibo (1996, 376) note that it is from this date that one can say that
Kiswahili had become the national language of Tanganyika. After independ-
ence, the promotion of adult education through the medium of Kiswahili
helped to spread its use to the older people in the rural areas of mainland
Tanzania. In 1967 the then Prime Minister Rashid Kawawa directed all gov-
ernment business to be conducted in Kiswahili (Senkoro 2005). Nyerere saw
how the use of Kiswahili would rapidly increase the literacy rate in the coun-
try and mobilise the people for an African social democratic policy, which he
would term ‘ujamaa’ (familyhood). Nyerere did a lot to promote Kiswahili,
21 Multilingualism and language in education in Tanzania
personally translating two of Shakespeare’s plays into Kiswahili and using the
language in parliament, in the government and in the lower judicial courts.
In his eagerness to promote Kiswahili, Nyerere was aware of the fact that
the other vernacular languages in Tanzania were driven to the back-seat. He
felt, however, that the other languages should be kept alive and that words
from these languages should enrich Kiswahili. There are several examples of
how he introduced words and expressions from his mother tongue, Kizanaki,
into Kiswahili.
An alternative to the strong promotion of Kiswahili, had it been politic-
ally and economically feasible at the time, would have been to settle for a
policy where mother tongues of the children were used for beginning lit-
eracy together with Kiswahili, which then would have been used as the sole
language of instruction at a later stage, while English was taught as a sub-
ject throughout the education system. This is a trilingual model of educa-
tion advocated among others by the late Cameroonian sociolinguist Maurice
Tadadjeu (1989). In Voie Africaine he argues for a three-language model for
Africa, whereby everybody first learns to master his/her mother tongue,
then learns a regional African language that can be used as a language of
instruction in secondary and tertiary education and at the same time learns
an international language as a subject. When Nyerere did not promote the
multilingual view argued for by Tadajeu, it probably had to do with his wish
to unite the country and avoid tribalism. Currently, Kiswahili in Tanzania is
increasingly becoming the mother tongue of the younger generation born in
urban and peri-urban areas, where people from different ethnic communi-
ties live and work together.
The ethnic community languages of Tanzania
According to Muzale and Rugemalira (2008), there are 150 ethnic commu-
nity languages in Tanzania. The education language policy is silent about
these languages. These are the languages that are mostly spoken in the re-
mote rural areas. For children aged 0–6 years, the respective ECL of their
community is the only language they speak. They start primary school at age
7, at which point they encounter Kiswahili for the first time and start using
it as their language of instruction (LOI). Many of the ethnic community lan-
guages are very similar; many are just dialects of each other because most
of them are of Bantu origin. However, some of the languages are not Bantu
and are very different. This is the case for the languages of the Wamaasai,
Wabarbaig, Wairaqw and Wahadzabe. For example, one of the authors wit-
nessed two election campaigns (General Elections for 1995 and for 2000)
among the Barbaig and Hadzabe ethnic communities where someone had to
translate the campaign speeches from Kiswahili into Kibarbaig or Kihadzabe.
This is an indication that in the remote rural areas Kiswahili is rarely spoken,
if at all, and children from these communities would most likely not speak
Kiswahili until they started going to school at the age of 7.
Apart from Kiswahili, most Tanzanians speak one or more of the ECLs
that they spoke with their parents when young and often spoke in the vil-
lage where they grew up – especially those on the borderlines of two or more
languages. They are multilingual in African languages, as are most Africans
(Prah and Brock-Utne 2009). A Tanzanian school inspector tells how he
grew up with three different languages (Kimizi 2009). He would speak one of
them with his father’s clan, another very different one with his mother’s clan
(they all lived in the same compound), and Kiswahili with his friends. He
could not say which one was his mother tongue of first language (L1). Adama
Ouane (2009), from Mali, the former Director of the UNESCO Institute of
Lifelong Learning, also explains that he grew up with three different African
languages simultaneously and, like Kimizi, cannot tell which one is his
mother tongue or L1. Africans are now increasingly moving within and be-
tween countries and as a result are becoming more and more multilingual
in African languages. Prah (2009) found that in Nima, Ghana, 69% of those
interviewed spoke at least four languages, while 41% spoke five languages
or more. It is generally estimated that Kiswahili is spoken by more than 100
million people in East Africa, yet there is no secondary school or institution
of higher education in Tanzania that uses Kiswahili as the LOI. The majority
of newspapers in Tanzania are written in Kiswahili and the number of inter-
net sites in Kiswahili is growing daily.
The language policy of Tanzania
The language policy of Tanzania has been going back and forth between the
wishes of extending Kiswahili as the language of instruction in secondary
school and higher education, and introducing English as the LOI already in
primary school (Brock-Utne 2012). In 1967 the second vice president declared
Kiswahili the medium of instruction throughout the seven years of primary
education (Std. I – VII)1 . In the second Five Year Plan of Tanzania (1969–74)
this move was thought to be only part of a larger plan to implement the use of
Kiswahili as the medium of instruction throughout the educational system.

As noted in the Five Year Plan:
Children, on entering secondary school, will now have to shift to study in a new
language, at the same time as taking on more difficult sets of subjects . . . as the
government moves over to the complete use of Kiswahili it will hence become
more and more inappropriate to have the secondary and higher educational
system operate in English (URT 1969, 152).
The government at the time was also aware of the fact than when it came to
the language of instruction, its choice and use would have social class impli-
cations. The Five Year Plan has this to say about the ‘linguistic gulf’:
The division between Kiswahili education at primary level and English education
at the secondary level will create and perpetuate a linguistic gulf between differ-
ent groups and will also tend to lend an alien atmosphere to making it inevitably
remote from the problems of the masses of society (URT 1969, 152).
In 1969 the Ministry of National Education sent a circular to the headmas-

ters and headmistresses of all secondary schools outlining the plan for the
gradual introduction of Kiswahili as the medium of instruction. According
to Bhaiji (1976), secondary school teachers at that time also favoured a shift to
Kiswahili as a medium of instruction. The Ministry’s circular suggested that
political education (‘Siasa’), a subject dealing with the political philosophy of
the party CCM, should be taught in Kiswahili from the school year 1969/70,
Domestic Science from the school year 1970/71, and History, Geography,
Biology, Agriculture and Mathematics from 1971/72 (Bhaiji 1976, 112). Bhaiji
(1976) explains that at this time curriculum developers had already started
to translate and compile all the technical and scientific terms of school sub-
jects. Some schools had already received a booklet on mathematical terms
in Kiswahili. The teaching of Siasa through the medium of Kiswahili was
introduced. But then the reform stopped. Why did it stop when both the
secondary school teachers and the Ministry of Education were in favour of a
shift and curriculum developers had started to translate and compile texts?
As far as we are aware, nothing has been written about this. According to
Tanzanians knowledgeable about the language policy discourse in Tanzania,
it seems that the reform was stopped by the president himself.
Swalehe Kassera (2003) from Iringa, tells of a wonderful Mathematics
teacher, Kiimbila, now deceased, who in the early 1960s, working in Kagera,2
used Kiswahili in secondary school for teaching the basics of Mathematics.
In this way the students understood Mathematics much better than when
taught in English. Kiimbila was of the opinion that Kiswahili ought to be

used in Mathematics teaching also at the university. Kassera argued, like
Kiimbila did, that Kiswahili is understood all over the country and functions
as a second language for those for whom it is not the first.
The language policy on the medium of instruction in Tanzania stipulates
that Kiswahili is the LOI for primary schools while English is the LOI for
secondary schools. The most current language policy (not yet made public)
advocates the introduction of English as the LOI also in government pri-
mary schools (it has been used in some private primary schools for some
years), and Kiswahili as the LOI in secondary schools. So far, a few govern-
ment primary schools have switched to using English. No secondary school
has, however, switched to the use of Kiswahili as LOI. Our own research in
the Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA) pro-
ject, running from 2002 until 2012, shows that secondary school pupils in
Tanzania learn better when the LOI in secondary schools is Kiswahili than
when it is English.3
In 2000, the National Council for Kiswahili, BAKITA, organised a two-
day conference on the language of instruction and quality of education in
Tanzania. On the second day of the conference, the Minister of Education, a
professor of Science, was invited to give some closing remarks. Qorro (2009)
tells us that his final comment on the issue of language of instruction was
that the government did not have the money to do experiments and ‘waste’
the few resources it had on the LOI.
‘The little money that is available will be spent on improving the quality
of education and not on the language of instruction’, he concluded, then
declared that the conference was closed. From the minister’s remarks, one
gathers that the LOI is seen as separate from the process of delivering quality
education. The minister even considered spending funds on the LOI as a
waste of resources. Some of those who participated in the heated discussion
were left with questions unanswered. Qorro (2009, 60) asks:
. . . did the Minister understand the meaning of language of instruction? How
does the language of instruction relate to education, and quality education for
that matter? Is it possible to improve the quality of education without addressing
the issue of language of instruction? If, for example, the conference had been on
electrification of a number of schools, would the Minister have said that there was
no money to ‘waste’ on copper wires and that the little money available would
be spent on supplying electricity to the schools? How else is the electrification
process to take place if not through copper wires? Or, suppose the issue under
discussion had been supplying water to the schools, would the Minister have said
that there was no money for pipes and that the little money available would be
spent on supplying water to the schools, but no money to ‘waste’ on pipes?
The language policy of Tanzania makes no mention of the over 150 ethnic
community languages, mostly spoken in the rural areas of mainland
Tanzania. This position is probably based on the belief that Kiswahili is
spoken by all Tanzanians, young and old. However, for children between
ages 6 and 9 years, living in remote rural areas, Kiswahili is not the home
language, and many children from these areas do not encounter Kiswahili
until they start attending school. This situation has either been overlooked
by the policy makers or simply ignored.
The importance of using ECLs in early education has been raised else-
where. In West Africa, Fakinlede (2013) proposes laying a sound basis for
scientific and reflective thinking early in a child’s learning process by mak-
ing use of his Indigenous language. He argues that introducing Science and
Technology to a child is most successful when done in the language the child
best understands. This enables the child to form ideas that stay with him/her
throughout life. The other advantages of using ECLs, as stated by Fakinlede,
are that the situation enables the child to indigenise knowledge in Science
and Technology early in the child’s education process; and it makes Science
available to all children, irrespective of their economic background or status.
Recent research findings (Twaweza 2012, Mapunda 2013) from rural areas
in Tanzania show that the situation is hopeless in the sense that pupils do not
understand what the teacher is saying. It is recommended that policy makers
bring on board the issue of LOI in the early years of primary school in rural
areas and consider the use of ECLs as LOI, at least for the first three or four
years of schooling, then transit into Kiswahili as LOI for the rest of school-
ing duration, including secondary and tertiary education. English should be
learnt as a subject, a foreign language, which it is to Tanzanians. The best way
to learn English is not to have it as a language of instruction but to learn it as
a subject, taught well by teachers who are good speakers of English. Teaching
a foreign language is a skill that one cannot expect teachers of other subjects
to have developed.
A study by Twaweza (2012) shows that, although the expectations of
most parents, teachers and policy makers is that every child in Tanzania in
Standard 3 or above should have mastered core literacy and numeracy skills
of Standard 2 level, the reality falls far short of this goal. Over the past three
years literacy levels have remained low and largely unchanged. Some of the
most important results from the Twaweza study (2012) show that very few
children in rural areas are learning to read in early primary school, and that
nationally, only one in four children in Standard 3 can read a Standard 2 level
story in Kiswahili. The study further shows that it is not until Standard 5 that
the majority of pupils can read at Standard 2 level.
Data from the study by Twaweza confirm clearly the urban-rural dispar-
ities in children’s learning outcomes. In general, children who live in urban
districts performed much better than children who live in rural districts. The
urban-rural disparities have also been observed in another study conducted
in Tanzania by Mapunda (2013).
Mapunda (2013) conducted a study on early literacy learning through
Kiswahili in Tanzania primary schools. He compared pupils’ classroom par-
ticipation in two types of settings. One setting was a rural district where an
ECL is the dominant language of the community; while in the other setting,
Kiswahili is the dominant language of the community. Mapunda studied
classroom interaction conducted in Kiswahili in two linguistic contexts. The
reason the two linguistic contexts were chosen can be interpreted as testing
the myth (as reflected in the policy pronouncement) that Kiswahili is used
and understood well everywhere in the country and therefore is suitable as
the only language of instruction in all primary schools. However, findings
showed that pupils in remote rural districts, where the ECL is dominant,
had more difficulties learning through Kiswahili as LOI compared to pupils
from the district in which Kiswahili was the dominant language. From his
study, Mapunda (2013) points out indicators of language difficulties as gath-
ered from his classroom observation; these he points out as:
• Instances where pupils responded in ECL
• Poor participation or withdrawal of responses from teacher’s questions
• Only a few pupils answering questions and teachers consistently nomin-
ating the same pupils to get responses
• Use of teaching strategies that conceal silence, an indication of communi-
cation failure
• Use of ECL in group discussion
• Anomolous relationship in the classroom between teachers and learners
• Responses that are irrelevant to questions asked. (Mapunda 2013, 77)
In some cases teachers admitted that pupils did not understand Kiswahili at
all, especially in the early grades. Specifically, pupils had difficulty describing
pictures in Kiswahili, using Kiswahili vocabulary, and had problems related
to syntax and morphology.
The findings from the Twaweza study (2012) are corroborated by data from
Mapunda’s study (2013), although it should be noted that the Twaweza study
is of a more general nature, while Mapunda’s study is based on pupils’ ability
to use Kiswahili as LOI.
In any kind of learning, a language that the learner understands is a pre-
requisite for effective learning. This is because the level of language mastery
determines the processing and presentation of thoughts. In order for a child
to become fully literate, he/she needs both knowledge of language (how to
use it) and knowledge about language (how it is structured/how it works).
In the case of Tanzania, especially in the remote rural areas, the most ap-
propriate language that can best function as LOI for early child education/
literacy is the respective ECLs. The major snag in this case is the multipli-
city of these languages and the practicability of training teachers and getting
learning materials in the ethnic languages.
Rubagumya et al. (2011, 83) end their article on linguistic human rights in
Tanzania by stating:
What is needed above all in Tanzania, as in Africa in general, is higher quality
education through African languages. Communities in Africa will only be able
to learn and teach through their own languages once they see that their use in
schools is effective and their role in society brings rewards. The duration of edu-
cation through these languages must be extended, its effectiveness increased and
the number of languages used as media of instruction expanded.
Rubagumya et al. (2011) claim that this message is being heard by academics,
but not yet clearly enough by governments or communities (see e.g. Brock-
Utne 2014a). We would like to add that the message is being heard by some
academics, but far from all. The question of which language should be used
as the LOI in secondary school is a question hotly debated by academics at
the University of Dar es Salaam – a good example is the email debate on
this issue that followed the intranet publication of an application for a job as
an ‘askari’ (a guard), written in pitiful English by a secondary school leaver
(Senkoro 2008). Yet, we believe, as Rubagumya et al. (2011) do, that the fight
for the linguistic rights of Tanzanians must come from the academics (Brock-
Utne 2014b). We agree with their argument that academics must make the
message louder through advocacy and by further research.
We should also put more resources into showing that it works by setting up
demonstration schools that deliver high-quality education with average lev-
els of resourcing in African languages. Plans for creating such demonstration
schools have been there for some time, but have not been realised yet. Finally,
African languages should be used for increasingly wide and more sophis-
ticated functions in society, so that they become accepted by their users as
proper vehicles for education (Rubagumya et.al. 2011, 83), and that know-
ledge and skills gained through formal education can be disseminated to the
wider public.
notes
1 At that time, middle schools had already been abolished and there was no Std. VIII
under the new system of education.
2 Kagera is an area in Tanzania where most people speak Kihaya as their first language;
Kiswahili is a second language to the people living in the area (the Wahaya), though
many are brought up with Kiswahili and Kihaya simultaneously.
3 In the first phase of the LOITASA project four books were published. Two were pub-
lished in Tanzania and two were published in South Africa (Brock-Utne et al. 2003, 2004,
2005, 2006). A Canadian who had read all four books had them reviewed and, together
with two blind reviewers, selected chapters from all the first four books to make a fifth
book published in Europe (Brock-Utne et al. 2010). In the second phase, four more books
were produced with, once again, two being published in Tanzania (Qorro et al. 2008,
2012), and two being published in South Africa (Desai et al. 2010, 2013).
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3 Language-in-education policy and
practice in Ghanaian classrooms:
Lessons from School for Life’s
complementary education programme
Kingsley Arkorful (Education Development Center) and Carolyn Temple Adger

(Center for Applied Linguistics)
Introduction
Despite all the research and the many policy debates arguing that children
learn best when they can participate fully, and that developing strong lan-
guage and literacy skills implies learning first in a language that children
know (e.g. Arua 2003; Ouane and Blanz 2011), Ghana still struggles with the
language-in-education issue. From colonial times through the immediate
post-independence period to the present, selection of the language of instruc-
tion in the primary school – either English, which is the official language,
or one of 11 Ghanaian languages – has been inconsistent both in terms of
policy and practice (Opoku-Amankwa 2009; Prah 2009). Ghana’s language-
in-education policy currently calls for Ghanaian language instruction at
the lower primary school level, but there remains a fundamental disconnect
between this policy and educational practice in the formal schools, where
English maintains a foothold. This state of affairs raises questions about how
children who speak languages other than English can gain access to quality
primary education. At issue is how to accommodate the need to build new
knowledge and skills out of what children already know – especially their
language resources, since language is fundamental to learning – along with
the demand for children to learn English, which opens doors to economic
and educational choices and opportunities.
School for Life, a well-established complementary education programme
serving out-of-school children in Ghana’s Northern Region, provides lessons
for the comprehensive implementation of the country’s language-in-educa-
tion policy in lower primary school. This chapter describes the School for Life
31
32 Kingsley Arkorful and Carolyn Temple Adger
curriculum and pedagogy and compares it to that of the Ghanaian govern-

ment lower primary school, drawing on a study of the planned, implemented
and received curricula of the two systems that analyses them within a so-
cial constructivist framework (Arkorful 2013). While the two curricula share
some similar characteristics, such as culturally relevant themes or topics, the
School for Life curriculum is also functionally relevant as it is designed to
connect with the social and economic lives of the learners and their com-
munities. More important, consistent use of the mother tongue throughout
the School for Life lessons creates the basis for a real community of learning
in which teachers, learners and parents share in the social construction of
knowledge.
Language-in-education policy in Ghana
Of the more than 70 languages indigenous to Ghana (Lewis 2009), only 11

are officially approved for use in the formal school system. There is very little
information on the reasons for their selection, but maintaining this tradition
is at least partly political: The languages are geographically distributed and
they include several smaller Northern languages. However, selecting eleven
out of the multiplicity of Ghana’s languages implies depriving almost 30%
of the school population from using their mother tongue in school (Ghana
Statistical Service 2012). Moreover, with a shifting language-in-education
policy over the years and apathetic implementation, many more children
have been similarly deprived.
During the colonial era (pre-1957), the language of instruction policy
called for using both English and local languages in primary schools. Since
independence, Ghana has continued this policy, albeit inconsistently. From
1971 up until 2002, the language-in-education policy in Ghana was generally
that the 11 approved Ghanaian languages should be used as the medium of
instruction in the first three years of the primary course, and where possible,
in the next three years as well. The policy was revised in 2002 making English
the only approved medium of instruction in all primary schools (Ministry
of Education 2002; Opoku-Amankwa 2009). In 2008, the new Education
Reforms reverted that policy, making a Ghanaian language the medium of
instruction from Primary Class 1 to 3 and English language the medium of
instruction thereafter (Government of Ghana 2008). Even then, the wording
in the policy does not commit the state to ensuring that Ghanaian language
is used: rather, the policy states that the Ghanaian language will be used as
33 Language-in-education policy and practice in Ghanaian classrooms
the medium of instruction ‘where feasible’ (Government of Ghana 2008).

This leaves the door open for different types of interpretation and implemen-
tation models to the disadvantage of the Ghanaian child.
Language policy is always a politically charged affair in multilingual coun-
tries. Over time the decision to use the English language or a Ghanaian lan-
guage as the language of instruction in primary schools has been made not
on educational grounds alone and it is always met with mistrust and misun-
derstanding from sections of the community with little consideration for the
good of the learners. As a result, Ghana, as with a number of other African
countries, has no clear, unambiguous language policy, and there is always a
gap between the language policy and language use in schools (Heugh 2008;
Pinnock 2009).
Hawes (1979) notes that regardless of swings and ambiguity in language
policy, it is commonplace for schools and teachers to choose their own lan-
guage of communication and instruction, either explicitly or implicitly, both
in the moment and over time. This is borne out of pure necessity. In the end,
language choice may be influenced by official policy, the community’s lan-
guage attitudes and of course the need to make meaning in teacher/student
interaction, using ‘what language the teacher can teach and what language
the children can best understand’ (Hawes 1979, 111). Thus all sorts of pat-
terns may emerge, with different schools utilising different local policies and
in some cases lessons being taught in more than two languages.
The role of English

As the language policy has seesawed on the role of Ghanaian languages in
education, it has always placed English at the centre. From colonial times
to the present, English has retained its preeminent status in Ghana as the
language of career advancement. Excellent English communication skills
are vital for success in most professions in Ghana (Adika 2012; Anyidoho
2012). Opoku-Amankwa (2009) posits that Ghanaian parents are of the view
that the very purpose of education is to learn to speak and write in English,
echoing Brock-Utne (2010), who observes that ‘education means primarily
learning English for many Africans in the so-called Anglophone Africa.
This includes parents and students as well as African governments’ (641).
Despite evidence that children learn better when they are taught in their own
languages (e.g. Walter 2013), parents still support English-only instruction
(Hartwell 2010). Reasons for this include distrust of policy developers and
donor or foreign experts, and the government’s attempts to bridge the urban/
rural divide and create a classless society.
Certainly the value of learning an international language cannot be con-

tested, and that is the case in Ghana with regard to English. The language
policy recognises the value of the English language by identifying it as the
medium of instruction beginning in Class 4, but it is silent on English learn-
ing. Few Ghanaian children live in a language environment that would en-
able them to acquire English naturally. English is required as a subject from
Primary 1, but the English language syllabus does not take into account re-
search on communicative approaches to second-language learning. Nor does
it address the need to introduce English reading only after children have
learned how to read in the Ghanaian language they know well. This weak-
ness in curriculum, combined with traditions of rote learning, means that
many children are not able to develop the level of English proficiency that
they need in order to succeed at school and in the workforce.
Indeed, shifting instruction from an Indigenous language to English at
Primary 4, which implies an early exit model of local language instruction,
has not been effective across Africa or elsewhere (Prah 2009). Writing on
the language of education in Tanzania, Qorro (2009) indicates that teachers
and children always have difficulty in expressing themselves in the English
language, resulting in students’ poor performance not only in learning the
subject matter but also in learning English. Similar conditions are not un-
common in Ghana’s primary schools (Opoku-Amankwa 2009).
Implementation of the language-of-instruction policy

As a result of this inconsistency in the language policy, pressure for English,
and lack of official support for the language policy, there has been an en-
during disconnect between language policy and teacher training, teacher de-
ployment and primary school curriculum development, all of which proceed
without attention to teaching and learning in a Ghanaian language (Hartwell
2010). Consequently, very little learning takes place in primary schools, as
seen in the results of the Ghana National Education Assessment (Ministry
of Education 2013), primarily because children are not being educated con-
sistently in a language they can understand. In his study of Ghana’s language
policy, Opoku-Amankwa found that as a result of English being used as a
medium of instruction, classroom interaction was teacher-centred ‘as many
pupils are unable to communicate fluently in English . . . Indeed, it can be
argued that participants in our case-study school are colluding in an elab-
orate pretence: the teacher pretends to be teaching and the pupils pretend to
be learning’ (Opoku-Amankwa 2009, 128–30).
Pinnock (2009) notes that the language of instruction is the critical factor
in the low achievement of learners across the developing world especially in
the many situations like Ghana where children do not use the school language
at home. She cites a number of studies to confirm this assertion – including
the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a test
of Mathematics and Science ability conducted in 36 countries at Grade 4 and
48 countries at Grade 8, and assessments from the Southern and Eastern
Africa Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality (SACMEQ II) from
2000 to 2002. These assessments consistently show that teaching children
in a language they do not use at home and in their daily lives results in poor
performance in literacy, numeracy and other areas of learning (Pinnock
2009; Alidou et al. 2006).
If formal education is to succeed in helping children to build the necessary
knowledge and skills to be productive, then surely it must be delivered in a
medium that children and teachers can use in building knowledge together.
Broadly, children learn best in the language that they use most expertly, most
often and at home. Using a local language for instruction will not guarantee
success in children’s learning (Pinnock 2009), but instruction in a language
they do not know is clearly ineffective. Thus, integral to improving instruc-
tion in Ghana is a language policy that protects the place of Ghanaian lan-
guages in schools and an educational policy that implements it.
A model for successful mother-tongue instruction

If language policy and related educational policy overlook the research on
language and literacy, then language and literacy learning can be desul-
tory, as it is in many African countries despite hefty economic investment
in the education sector (Dubeck et al. 2012; O’Sullivan 2003). But innovative
Indigenous programmes that support learning in children’s mother tongue
can inform and inspire governments that are mired in ineffective, politic-
ally driven policies; counter-productive traditions of teacher education and
deployment, as well as stale textbook production in languages that children
do not know; and out-of-date instructional practices that involve students
only superficially. In Ghana, the School for Life programme described below
provides such a model. It successfully addresses one of the core objectives of
the formal school curriculum – children acquiring literacy (Government of
Ghana 2008; Ghana Education Service 2007).
This programme was the focus of a comparative study utilising quanti-
tative and qualitative methods for documentary analysis, student assess-
ment, lesson observation and in-depth interviews with various stakeholders
(Arkorful 2013). Documentary analysis involved scrutiny of curriculum
materials both for School for Life and the formal primary school. Given that
School for Life graduates generally enter the formal school at Primary 4, the
assumption is that they have covered the lower primary requirements of state
education. The study entailed an analysis of the syllabi for English Language,
Ghanaian Language and Mathematics, for comparison with the complemen-
tary education programme’s curriculum. Students’ texts and teachers’ guides
used under the two systems were also examined closely to determine any
thematic and/or content linkages and to assess whether the School for Life
curriculum met the requirements of lower primary school. A different level
of document review examined students’ written work and teachers’ lesson
plans (for classes which were observed) to determine the extent to which they
correlated with the requirements of the syllabus.
Because the study focused on assessing the curriculum as received
by learners, it involved administering English and Mathematics tests to
Primary 4 and Primary 6 students at ten randomly selected formal schools
in the district where the research was conducted. In total, 387 students (200
Primary 4 and 187 Primary 6) participated in the assessment, out of which
150 in both grades were School for Life graduates. The study utilised the 2009
National Education Assessment English and Mathematics test instruments.
Structured classroom observation was conducted both in School for Life and
formal school classrooms to gauge teachers’ competency in 20 elements of
effective teaching, including the teaching of reading.
Interviews were carried out with School for Life instructional facilitators
and community members. Discussions with parents and community leaders
centred on their experiences with School for Life, in particular their percep-
tions of children’s learning and how it compared with that of children in the
community who had attended the government school since Primary 1, rather
than attending School for Life and then transfering into Primary 4.
The following sections show how instruction is developed and delivered in
School for Life compared to the formal school; how the use of local language
and a functional curriculum promotes social construction of knowledge; and
the lessons that can be learned from School for Life for formal school instruc-
tion and ultimately for language-in-education policy in Ghana.
School for Life
School for Life is an accelerated functional literacy and numeracy programme

that provides opportunities for out-of-school children, aged 8 to 14, in mar-
ginalised communities to learn in their own language and to eventually access
formal education. The programme complements the state education system
by serving children in hard-to-reach communities and those who for socio-

economic reasons do not have access to formal primary school (however, par-
ents in communities with both a School for Life programme and a formal
school sometimes opt for the complementary programme for reasons that are
suggested below). School for Life was introduced in the Northern Region in
1995. Students attend School for Life classes for three hours a day, five days
a week, for nine months. Classes are held in the local community school (if
there is one) after formal classes close in the afternoon or in any convenient
space designated by the community. Each class has a maximum of 25 learners,
preferably 13 girls and 12 boys. Where there are more than 25 children in a
community, priority is given to the older ones (that is, 14 years downwards).
Classes are conducted by volunteer facilitators who are literate in their
mother tongue and are recruited from and by the community to teach the
course. These facilitators are given an initial three-week intensive training
course, follow-up refresher training workshops and support by School for
Life field staff. To date, the programme has succeeded in enrolling more than
150 000 children, over 70% of whom have been integrated into the formal
education sector (School for Life 2010). Performance of School for Life gradu-
ates on the National Education Assessment in Math and English (a subject
not addressed by School for Life) during their first year in formal education
(Class 4) is roughly equivalent to that of children who enrolled there in Class
1 (Arkorful 2013).
The School for Life curriculum is based on meeting the requirements for
literacy and numeracy learning in the first three years of formal education. It
does not directly address other subjects taught in formal schools, including
English. This arrangement begs the question of how the learners gain the
ability to proceed in the formal system once they enrol, since instruction
there involves English. The School for Life curriculum assists learners to
acquire individually and socially useful knowledge, building on what they
learn at home, such as personal hygiene, environmental sanitation, good
farming practice, and so forth. Pedagogical practices have been described
as child-centred, active and participatory, as illustrated in the next section
(Farrell and Hartwell 2008).
School for Life effectiveness has been attributed to the following factors,
which contrast with practice in the formal schools:
• Mother tongue medium of instruction
• Simple and effective methodology: use of syllabic and phonic methods in
the teaching of literacy
• A book ratio of one to one
• Availability of books for children to take home

• Small class sizes (25 maximum)
• A high degree of monitoring, on-site supervision and training for
instructors provided by programme administrators
• The commitment of School for Life facilitators to their students’ learning
• Flexible school hours adjusted to the needs of the community.
(Casely-Hayford and Adom Ghartey 2007)
The flow of a lesson

This section describes instructional activities in a typical School for Life class
in order to demonstrate both the cultural relevance of the lessons and their
constructive dimension, based on interaction among students and facilitator.
Typically lessons begin with the facilitator handling administrative matters
such as registration and making sure that students have the necessary materials
for the afternoon’s activities. Then the facilitator reviews the previous lesson,
usually through questioning. Next s/he introduces the topic of the new lesson,
which is usually written on the board, and develops it at some length through
explanation, incorporating questions and weaving students’ responses into
the process. One or more examples, usually taken from the teacher manual
or the student primer, are worked out on the board and discussed. The first
excerpt below presents the researcher’s perspective on the lesson; the second
one incorporates instructor and student academic interaction.
Excerpt One
It is 3.00 p.m. and I am waiting for the School for Life class to begin at Gbulahagu
Primary School [This class is held in the community’s government school build-
ing]. According to the local committee chairman, the School for Life has been
running in the community for the past ten years; the community really likes the
School for Life classes, which have become almost part of the community’s insti-
tutional structure. Given this background and also having gleaned from conver-
sations with School for Life staff that lessons start at 3.00 p.m., I decide to wait for
the class after the close of formal school.
Fifteen minutes later, no School for Life learners have arrived and I begin to won-
der whether today is one of the days when there is no class, as I have been given to
understand that the School for Life class has two days off each week. Children start
trickling in at 3.20. This gives me some hope that I have not been waiting in vain. In
the next ten minutes, all the children are accounted for as well as the facilitator, who
gets in at 3.25. There do not seem to be any worries at all on the part of either facili-
tator or learners that lessons are starting almost half an hour later than scheduled.

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Multilingualism and Language in Education

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MULTILINGUALISM AND

Edited by Androula Yiakoumetti

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

Information on this title: education.cambridge.org/

Includes bibliographical references and index

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy

Introduction Language policy and practice with a focus on

PART ONE Africa

Chapter 3 Language-in-education policy and practice in Ghanaian classrooms:

PART TWO South Asia

Chapter 6 Translanguaging in Singapore: Discourse in monolingual versus

Chapter 8 Schooling within shifting langscapes: Educational responses in

PART FOUR The Caribbean and North America

PART FIVE Europe

Jim Anderson (Goldsmiths, University of London) is Senior Lecturer in Languages

Denise Angelo (Australian National University) is an educator, language teacher,

Kingsley Arkorful (Education Development Center Inc.) is a Principal Inter-

Birgit Brock-Utne (University of Oslo) is a Professor in Education and Development

Antoinette Camilleri Grima (University of Malta) is Professor of Applied

Nina Carter (Australian National University) has worked in a range of contexts in

Jenna Cushing-Leubner (University of Minnesota) is a PhD student in Second

Ritu Jain (National University of Singapore) is a doctoral candidate in the South

Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu (Howard University) is Professor of Linguistics and

Kendall A. King (University of Minnesota) is Professor of Second Languages

Vicky Macleroy (Goldsmiths, University of London) is a Senior Lecturer in English

Ajit Mohanty (National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium) is Chief

140 publications including seven books in the areas of psycholinguistics, multilin-

Martha Qorro (University of Dar es Salaam) is an Associate Professor in the

Minati Panda (Jawaharlal Nehru University) is a Professor and currently the

Thomas Ricento (University of Calgary) is Professor and Research Chair in English

Farzad Sharifian (Monash University) is Professor and Director of Language and

Carolyn Temple Adger (Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC) is a

Viniti Vaish (Nanyang Technological University) is Associate Professor within

Lionel Wee (National University of Singapore) is a Professor in the Department

Androula Yiakoumetti (Oxford Brookes University) is an applied linguist whose

The manifold dimensions of the field of teacher education are increasingly

particularly teacher development, which is now widely acknowledged as cen-

Michael Evans and Colleen McLaughlin

In a modern world characterised by globalisation, transnationalism, transmi-

languages as media of instruction, are challenges that need to be overcome.

Looking at Australia, Farzad Sharifian focuses on the education of

Commonwealth Charter still need to be properly addressed in language edu-

translanguaging practices can be fostered and enhanced. The students are

In spite of geographical and linguistic differences, Commonwealth nations

Commenting on the relationship between colonial powers and their former

in Europe, continue to inform language practices in the educational systems

Linguistic diversity and the linguistic landscapes of African

S/N Names Population (2011) Number of Official languages

1 Botswana 2 031 000 29 Setswana, English

On the contrary, and despite the post-independence euphoria to promote lin-

African Commonwealth countries. The literature shows that European coun-

Linguistic diversity in African Commonwealth countries and Europe

As a result of the British colonial legacy, English dominates the educational

Colonial ideologies, language-in-education practices and linguistic diversity

The ideology of the nation-state

The ideology of socio-economic development

The case for Prestige Planning for African languages

Traditionally, efforts to address language problems in Africa have concen-

people make to invest in certain languages or leave them behind is a func-

Towards framing Prestige Planning for African languages

The majority of African Commonwealth countries became independent

would allow for functional competencies in complementary languages for

Haarmann, H. (1990). Language Planning in the Light of a General Theory of Language: A

These words from the Commonwealth Charter point at a Commonwealth