people and planet

14
FIGURE 14.9:
Linguistic diversity is greatest in countries in sub-Saharan Africa
Index of linguistic diversity
Population
FIGURE 14.10:
Use of local languages is rising in sub-Saharan Africa, but most countries
are far from nationwide mother tongue instruction
Scale of language of instruction use in primary education, anglophone and
francophone countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 1960–2010
Scale of language use in education
10
8
4
0
1 billion
100 million
10 million
1 million
100,000
9
7
6
5
3
2
1
10,000
1960
0.0
1965
1970
Brazil
Mexico
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Anglophone countries
Francophone countries
Mali
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
China
Bangladesh
Egypt
< Least diverse Index of linguistic diversity
Most diverse >
2005
2010
Several local languages (exclusive)
One local language (exclusive)
Several local languages (generalized)
One local language (generalized)
Several local languages (expansion)
One local language (expansion)
Several local languages (experimentation)
One local language (experimentation)
Foreign African language only
European and foreign African language
(e.g. classical Arabic)
European language only
Notes: ‘Experimentation’ (levels 3 and 4) refers to government-authorized pilot
programmes to promote one or more local languages in a handful of schools. ‘Expansion’
refers to a significant increase in the number of schools participating (levels 5 and 6).
‘Generalized’ refers to nationwide implementation of such programmes, usually in the
early years before transition to an international language. ‘Exclusive’ refers to situations
where one or more local language is used as the medium of education throughout the
primary cycle, and the foreign language is taught only as a subject.
Source: Albaugh (2012).
0.6
Pakistan
Indonesia
Nigeria
0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
Notes: The index of linguistic diversity is the probability that two people selected from the
population at random will have different mother tongues; it ranges from 0 (everyone has
the same mother tongue) to 1 (no two people have the same mother tongue). Sub-Saharan
African countries are marked in orange. The population axis is in the logarithmic scale.
Source: Lewis et al. (2016).
India
and regular mapping of official policy documents, the
national constitution and laws related to linguistic
and cultural groups. A recent study of policy changes
in sub-Saharan Africa over 1960–2010 showed that at
the time of countries’ independence, 20 (or 43%) out of
43 sub-Saharan African countries used local languages
in primary education, compared with 38 (80%) now
(Albaugh, 2012, 2015). This study suggests convergence
towards high levels of local language use across the
region. But it also points to the different routes followed
by francophone and anglophone countries in this region.
Though progress in anglophone countries has slowed,
they are ahead of francophone countries; local languages
are gaining strength in the latter, influenced by advocacy
by local actors, but not enough to catch up (Figure 14.10).
Information for many countries can be found in the
online catalogue L’aménagement linguistique dans le
monde (Language planning around the world), which
shows the status of language in national education
policies, legislation and constitutions (Leclerc, 2016). Until
2011, the International Bureau of Education’s World Data
on Education compiled information from weekly lesson
timetables on which language(s) curricula were delivered
in. Combining information from these two data sources
would provide a global snapshot of national language in
education policies by grade or education level.
But monitoring the proposed thematic indicator based
on national policy documents has its limits. Such
documents rarely provide information on student
access to teaching and learning materials in their home
language. And it is difficult to determine whether official
policies on language in education are implemented at
the local level, and if not, whether this reflects a lack
of initial teacher preparation or in-service professional
development opportunities.
Take Mali, for example, a country that has moved quickly
to adopt the use of local languages in education (Figure
14.10). Starting with innovations in the early 1980s,
the government set forth a multilingual curriculum in
2002, introducing 11 national languages as media of
instruction in addition to French (Traore, 2009). Yet, even
a decade after this reform, school-level implementation
problems were considerable. In 2010, in the Mopti
region, for instance, a census of teachers and principals
in 949 primary schools found that only 24% of schools
followed the curriculum and, of those, only 1 in 3 offered
bilingual education for the entire 6-year primary cycle.
Even in these schools, only 11% of teachers had been
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CHAPTER 14 | TARGET 4.5 – EQUITY