Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

182 Language Planning and Education
Malawian pupils show far greater reading ability in their local language, Chichewa,
than the Zambian pupils do in their local language, Nyanja. 4
Given, then, that there is that there is little dispute in academic, if not in policymaking
circles, that an indigenous, local language, related to the mother tongue, is
the most effective medium of early education, the rest of this paper focuses on the
more contentious choice of media at the upper primary and secondary levels of
education.
7.1.2 Media of instruction at upper primary and secondary levels of
education
In many African countries, where English is the medium in the upper primary and
secondary education cycles, there is little exposure to English outside class, especially
in rural areas, and this coupled with poor teaching of the language in primary school
often means that pupils arriving at secondary school have insufficient proficiency to
learn subject matter presented in English. The most striking and extreme illustration
of this derives from Tanzania where Criper and Dodd’s 1984 study found that:
Most pupils leave primary school unable to speak or understand simple English.
A selected few enter secondary school but they are so weak in English that they are
unable to understand lessons or read textbooks in English. (Criper and Dodd
1984)
Certainly, Tanzania, for country-specific reasons, is an extreme case, but there are
indications that similar problems exist in a number of other African countries.
Williams and Cooke (2002: 307), for example, report adverse findings on the
situation in upper primary schools in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Zanzibar, Mauritius and
Namibia:
Studies of individuals African countries likewise present a gloomy picture. In
Zambia ample evidence shows that the vast majority of primary school pupils
cannot read adequately in English, the sole official language of instruction
(Nkamba and Kanyika 1998; Williams 1996), and Machingaidze et al. (1998)
conclude that in Zimbabwe between 60% and 66% of pupils at grade 6 do not
reach ‘the desirable levels’ … of reading in English. Similar findings for Zanzibar
(Nassor and Mohammed 1998), Mauritius (Kulpoo 1998), and Namibia (Voigts
1998) are reported on the basis of large-scale research (carried on behalf of
UNESCO by the Southern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational
Quality).
And in Francophone Africa there are few indications that the situation is significantly
better, with Alidou (2003: 108), for example, reporting a 25 per cent drop-out rate
between grades 4 and 5 in the primary schools of Burkino Faso, Mali and Niger, and
continuing underperformance, relative to international levels, of African students on
tests administered in French or English. 5
There is a body of evidence, then, to indicate that in many African countries