Children learn better in their native language

A project which supports bilingual classes and local language learning material, making schools more relevant and enjoyable for ethnic minority students in Vietnam, points the way to reversing the learning crisis for millions of children around the world who are taught in a language they don’t understand.

Over the last ten years remarkable progress has been made in getting more children into school. There has been a surge in primary school enrollments, more children are progressing through to secondary school, and gender gaps in education are narrowing.

However, there’s increasing recognition that the learning levels of these very children are still far below expectations.

By some estimates approximately 200 million children who are in primary school are learning so little that they are struggling to read basic words even after four years of school.

The language used at school is critical to educational success

One of the least recognized but most critical barriers to the educational achievement of children in low- and middle-income countries around the world is the very language in which they are taught.

In many countries, large numbers of children start school, only to find their teachers are speaking to them in a language they don’t understand. In other places, teachers start by communicating with children in their own language, but as soon as written words and numbers are introduced, teachers use a different language.

Faced with the prospect of attending classes where they don’t understand what’s going on, many children drop out of school altogether, while others fail their examinations and spend years repeating grades.

Adults often have powerful reasons for choosing a school language that children do not know. Nevertheless, we know that if the language used at school is different from the language children use at home, this can be a major cause of educational failure, wasting precious resources and robbing children of the opportunity to master basic skills.

Practical action to improve learning for ethnic minority children

In remote parts of Vietnam, many students from ethnic minorities didn’t like going to school. Conversant only in their local dialects and unable to speak Vietnamese—the official medium of instruction for schools in the country—they found it difficult to understand lessons.

Since 2010, more students have been attending school, often arriving early to enjoy local language books available in their new school library, thanks to a project designed to improve the quality of basic education for Vietnam’s ethnic minority children.

Funded by the Japan Social Development Fund and managed by Save the Children and the World Bank the project involves two key features which have helped to bridge the language gap.

Firstly, teaching assistants, who speak the children’s dialect are employed in all classrooms to work alongside state qualified teachers. The locally employed, bilingual teaching assistants explain lessons to students in the local dialect, ensuring that children have access to what’s being taught.

Secondly, the project supports the production of local language reading material, much of which is generated by the teachers and students themselves. Because the content is relevant to their lives, the children become enthusiastic about reading. This, in turn, motivates them to read, including in Vietnamese in which a wider range of material is available.

The project has also worked to incorporate more of the children’s minority culture into the education they receive: ethnic costumes, cultural items from festivals and musical instruments are displayed in classrooms, while local history and fun facts about life in the community are used as teaching and learning aids.

6,500 teachers benefited from the project through regular training courses and meetings to exchange knowledge and experience. They also improved their teaching skills by producing customized learning materials.

Student enrolment, retention and transitions have all improved.

“Before 2010, we had a lot of children dropping out of school,” says Bui Kim Dong, Education Department Official of Van Chan Commune, Yen Bai Province. “We no longer have this problem in remote areas.”

Urgent need to acknowledge the importance of language in education

Until we stop using traditional approaches to school language that treat children as if they naturally understand the language of teaching, when they do not, we won’t address the learning crisis in which millions of children in school currently fail, among other things, to read.

But change is possible.

Along with the example from Vietnam there are other well documented approaches which give children from linguistic minorities access to quality schooling without affecting their education or their linguistic rights and heritage.

Save the Children has been working to strengthen mother tongue based multilingual education for many years and has produced detailed guidance to help schools in low- and middle-income  countries respond to children’s language needs.

Greater awareness of the ways in which language can exclude children from education together with practical action in support of mother tongue learning are fundamental to addressing the global learning crisis.