Globally, approximately half of the children attending school are taught in languages they do not know, posing challenges to achieving quality education for all.

When learners cannot access education in a language they already understand, whether their mother tongue or one from their community, it can make it harder for them to learn, hindering their access to and progression through education.

When taught in their mother tongue, proficiency in their mother tongue improves, and so does the acquisition of foundational language skills that can be used across languages—the building blocks of reading—as well as foundational numeracy skills.

Still, teaching in mother tongue languages—the languages children speak at home—is not always feasible depending on the country.

Educational programs that match language needs: Lessons from Viet Nam and Cameroon

Viet Nam is home to 54 ethnic minority groups and their languages, making use of each language as a medium of instruction daunting and logistically difficult. Instead, the curriculum is taught in one language only: Vietnamese.

However, significant differences and disparities between children belonging to minority and majority language groups persist in their learning outcomes and participation in education in Viet Nam.

To tackle these disparities early on, VVOB’s Preschool Teachers Apply Language-rich Teaching Skills and Knowledge (TALK) project is promoting the inclusion of mother tongue languages as part of a language-rich learning environment, but not as part of instruction of the national curriculum.

Given the country’s linguistic diversity, the TALK project does not select mother tongue languages based on the classroom profile alone.

Instead, teachers welcome and incorporate many languages and cultures into classroom activities to support second-language learning, ensuring all children, regardless of their mother tongue, feel safe and engaged in meaningful learning.

A language-rich learning environment is a purposefully designed space that engages in language use and develops children’s foundational language skills through play-based learning.

By being encouraged to explore, participate in imaginative activities (like playing house or pretending to run a store) and collaborate to solve problems, learners can improve their language development through the introduction of new words and phrases relevant to their play.

The challenges of language in education and linguistic diversity are not unique to Viet Nam.

In sub-Saharan Africa, many francophone countries face major education disparities across students due to the use of French as the language of instruction in primary education despite this not being the language children speak at home.

In fact, most children have scarce contact with the French language in their daily lives, meaning their learning of literacy and numeracy skills is disrupted from the very beginning because of a language barrier.

To tackle this, the International Organisation of the Francophonie (OIF) launched the École et langues nationales (ELAN) program in 2012—implemented by the Institute of the Francophonie for Education and Training (IFEF)—to achieve quality education for all by integrating national African languages into basic education to improve teaching and learning.

In Cameroon, where there are over 250 officially identified languages, not only would it be costly to use each one as a medium of instruction, but there may also not be enough children within a specific area speaking any one language to justify opening a class.

The ELAN program in Cameroon explored this issue by choosing the majority language of the area as the language of instruction. The chosen language was the mother tongue of most children, though not all.

The results revealed children performed equally well regardless of whether it was their mother tongue as the children had greater familiarity with it compared to French.

The African language was a community language and therefore, understood by most people living in the area.

Language diversity in the classroom promotes quality learning

Benefits of bilingual education are also evident in other regions.

In Burkina Faso, bilingual education is implemented using national African languages as the first language of instruction before French is introduced as a second language.

The French language becomes a medium of instruction in the third year of primary school, but teaching continues to be provided in both languages throughout primary education according to the additive bilingualism approach.

The positive effects of this approach are clear.

Recent assessments of student achievement have demonstrated an improvement in the academic performance of students of bilingual classes, achieving some of the highest scores in the primary school end-of-school national exam in 2023.

Additionally, these students are completing primary education after five years of schooling instead of six such as in the classic monolingual curriculum in French.

This one-year reduction not only demonstrates the educational effectiveness of bilingual instruction but also represents a significant financial saving for the education system.

A similar approach is being adopted in South Africa, where subjects are initially taught in the mother tongue for the first three years with a subsequent shift to English in Grade 4.

Learning starts with the language of instruction

Embracing linguistic diversity is key to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.6: ensuring literacy and numeracy for all by 2030.

Approaches such as the ones taken in Viet Nam, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and South Africa to address language-based challenges in education show promising results to improve learning and education equity.

Efforts are needed to continue to raise awareness of the importance of the language of instruction in education, particularly in early primary years when language acquisition is critical to developing foundational skills in literacy and numeracy that will last a lifetime.