UNESCO’s “Languages Matter: Global Guidance on Multilingual Education”

UNESCO has released a report titled ‘Languages matter: Global guidance on multilingual education’ recently. 

Key Highlights of The Report

• The report was compiled recognising the 25th anniversary of International Mother Language Day.
  • International Mother Language Day: It is celebrated every year on the 21st  February and aims to preserve and promote the use of mother tongues.
• Prepared By: The report is prepared by UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) team
• Findings:
  • Access to Education in Mother Tongue: 40% of the global population does not have access to education in a language they speak or understand
    • In low- and middle-income countries, about 90 per cent of the population does not have access to education in their mother tongue affecting a quarter of a billion learners.
  • Linguistic Diversity: The rise in global migration is resulting in an increase in Linguistic Diversity in classrooms, where learners from diverse language backgrounds are becoming more common.
  • Over 31 million displaced youth are facing language barriers in education.
  • Learning Levels Loss: Learning levels has seen a sharp decrease in both reading and mathematics in overall population with the  gap increasing on average between 2010 and 2022,
    • Reading: From 12 to 18 percentage points
    • Mathematics: From 10 to 15 percentage points
  • Challenges: 
    • Implementation Challenge: It includes limited teacher capacity to use home languages, unavailability of materials in home languages and community opposition, limited resources for implementing multilingual education programmes.
    • Linguistic Challenges in Education: It stems from both historical and contemporary factor
      • Colonialism: The historical legacy of colonialism resulted in languages being imposed on local populations and preventing the use of their mother tongue for instruction creating educational disparities.
      • Immigration: It brings new languages to classrooms enriching linguistic diversity but face challenges in instruction and assessment with issues such as,
        • Making language acquisition support for immigrant students available, developing inclusive curricula that reflect diversity and ensuring equitable education.
  • Recommendations: 
    • Context Specific Approaches: Educational language policies of countries  should prioritise context-specific approaches supported by teaching and learning materials adapted for that grade.
    • Inclusive School Culture: A focus on fostering inclusion in schools, inclusive of multilingual students’ needs by selecting, recruiting and training school leaders in multilingualism.
    • To build a collaboration between school leaders and parents and the community to build bridges between linguistic groups.
    • For Immigrant Countries: Countries with significant immigrant populations should design their educational policies with effective bridging language programmes, hiring qualified teachers, and support inclusive learning environments.
    • Language transition must be backed by curriculum adjustments and implementation of multilingual education policies and practices
    • In Multilingual Contexts:
      • Training should ensure proficiency in both home and second languages
      • Teacher deployment could match the teacher’s language fluency with the language of instruction of the target school
      • Early childhood educators should be trained on culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy.

About Multilingual Education

• Multilingual Education (MLE) is the use of one or more than one language as a medium of instruction and learning in formal and non-formal settings.
  • According to UNESCO, the use of at least three languages is the basis of MLE
• Aim: It is to promote linguistic diversity, intercultural dialogue, social inclusion, and quality education for all learners and opportunities for all learners
• Models: 
  • Transitional Bilingual Education: This model uses mother tongue as the main language of instruction in the early years of a child’s learning
    • A second language (usually a dominant or official one) is gradually introduced as the medium of instruction.

• • Maintenance of Bilingual Education: This model keeps both the mother tongue as well as a second language as the language of instruction all throughout schooling. 
  • Immersion Bilingual Education: It focuses on the use of a second language as the main or even sole language of instruction for students who speak a different mother tongue.
    • Aim: To help the students acquire proficiency in the second language while maintaining their mother tongue.
  • Two-Way Bilingual Education: It uses two languages (A dominant/official language and a minority or indigenous language) as languages of instruction for the students who speak either one of them as their mother tongue.
    • Aim: To help students acquire a command of both languages while fostering cross-cultural understanding and cooperation
  • Multilingual Education: It uses more than two languages as languages of instruction for students who speak different mother tongues.
    • Aim: To develop a good command of multiple languages in the students while respecting and promoting linguistic diversity.
• Importance of Multilingual Education:
  • Enhance Cognitive Development: To learn in one’s mother tongue enhances cognitive skills such as memory, attention, reasoning, problem-solving, creativity, and metalinguistic awareness. Improves Academic Achievement:  Learning multiple languages enhance communication skills, critical thinking skills, and intercultural competence with improved  academic performance in various subjects
  • Supports Cultural Identity: It can help strengthen cultural identity, self-esteem, motivation, and emotional well-being fostering respect for diversity, tolerance, and empathy.
  • Promotes Social Inclusion: It reduces dropout rates, increases enrolment rates, and improves access to quality education for marginalised groups. Learning multiple languages also facilitates social integration, participation, and mobility.
• Challenges of Multilingual Education:
• • Inadequate Resources: Inadequate resources such as textbooks, curriculum, materials, infrastructure, or technology, which are necessary to provide quality MLE.
  • Insufficient Teacher Training: Many teachers are not adequately prepared or equipped to teach in multiple languages or to deal with multilingual classrooms lacking either the required linguistic competence, pedagogical skills, or cultural sensitivity to deliver Multilingual Education. 
    • Workload, burnout, and Isolation are also some challenges the teachers may face.
  • Negative Attitudes Towards Minority Languages: Biased belief and negative attitudes towards minority languages amongst parents, teachers, political class and students tends to hamper the adoption of such languages. 
    • Biased beliefs towards global languages like English or French make them more popular as a medium of instruction than local languages.
  • Dominant Monolingual Norms and Standards:  Monolingual assessments, examinations, or certifications disadvantage multilingual learners or teachers.
  • Lack of Political Will: To adopt MLE is not a popular agendas for many governments and programmes due to various reasons, such as national unity, security, prestige, or cost.
    • Opposition from dominant groups who perceive MLE as a threat to their linguistic or cultural hegemony is also a major barrier faced by Multilinguistic Education.

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