Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

180 Language Planning and Education
We turn first, however, to an overview of current policies on media of instruction
in sub-Saharan Africa, and to the problems attached to them.
7.1 CURRENT POLICIES ON MEDIA OF INSTRUCTION:
ARTICULATING THE PROBLEM
The tendency in much of anglophone Africa, with a few interesting exceptions, 1 is
for education to be conducted through an indigenous language medium2 for the first
three or four years of primary education, with a switch taking place thereafter to
exclusively English medium instruction. In Lusophone and Francophone Africa, by
contrast, Portuguese and French respectively tend to be the official languages of
instruction from the start, though in certain countries (e.g. Mozambique: see Benson
2000) this policy is under review following relatively successful experimentation with
bilingual media inclusive of local languages. 3 Table 7.1 summarises the situation in
a limited but not unrepresentative range of mainly anglophone countries.
This, of course, is only a portrait of official policies. The actual situation on the
ground is a good deal more complicated in that it is very common for teaching in the
local language, or some combination of the local indigenous language and the
exoglossic official language medium, to continue for some years after the official
switch of medium, producing a de facto bilingual medium. One of the principal
reasons for this classroom code-switching is simply that teachers find it necessary to
make themselves understood by pupils who have only limited proficiency in the
official language medium.
7.1.1 Media of education in lower primary school
There is widespread academic agreement that the mother tongue or a local language
well known in the community is, in principle, the most suitable medium for
education in the initial years of education. Put briefly, the educational argument is
that cognitive development and subject learning is best fostered through teaching in
a language the child knows well. Instruction in a language familiar to pupils improves
immeasurably the quality of interaction between teacher and pupil. It also narrows
the psychological gulf between home and school, integrates the school better into
the local community and gives recognition to the language and culture the child
brings to school with positive effects on the self-esteem of individuals and local
communities (see Benson 2002). The work of Cummins (1979, 1984) and others
suggests, moreover, that consolidation of the child’s L1 facilitates subsequent
acquisition of a second language (see Chapter 3).
In spite of equivocal early research findings (e.g. Engle 1975), these arguments are
increasingly bolstered by empirical evidence. For example, in a recent study Williams
(1996) shows that fifth-year primary pupils in Malawi, where the medium until
grade 4 is Chichewa, have no worse reading abilities in English than primary five
pupils in Zambia, where the official medium is English from grade 1. Moreover, the