Many African countries use a colonial language to teach primary school learners. But strong evidence shows that children learn best in their mother tongues.

University of South Australia associate professor in applied linguistics Kathleen Heugh spoke recently at the 10th Reading Association of South Africa Conference in Cape Town, where she made the case for such teaching.

Drawing from a UNESCO report that analysed 25 African countries, Heugh stressed that learners do best when mother tongue education is complemented by learning a colonial language. That mix is crucial to students picking up and expressing new concepts. Ethiopia, she said, is a key example:

“In Ethiopia we have seen that students who have the highest scores in English and Maths are the ones who have had the longest number of years in mother tongue education. Three years of mother tongue education is better than none… six years increases the opportunities to reach secondary school and eight years offers the best chances to reach the end of secondary school successfully.”

In that time, according to the UNESCO research, the colonial language should be taught as a secondary language so that when it eventually becomes the primary language of instruction, learners are ready for the transition.

But Godfrey Sentumbwe from Literacy and Adult Education, a Ugandan NGO, said that there are strong barriers to implementing the UNESCO findings.

“Long periods of ‘colonisation of the mind’ have led people to believe that their home languages are worthless in education, governance and legal matters,” he explained. “There are also hurdles to putting research into practice. We have many good policies on paper but the implementation is poor because the research on which the policies are based is inaccessible and incomprehensible to a wider audience.”

Another challenge is that teachers and parents often resist new curricula when governments try to introduce them, said Sentumbwe.

“We cannot afford to be contented, but we also must make sure that we work with both the governments and the communities if we want to achieve a lasting solution,” he added. “And we must widen our horizons beyond the early grades if we are to return to the Africa that existed 200 years before Christ, with centres of learning and excellence in our own languages that were renowned around the world.”

The UNESCO findings on mother tongue education have spread as far afield as China, Russia, South East Asia, Northern Europe and the United States. But they haven’t reached everywhere, says Heugh, which seems surprising in at least one case:

“The question really is why has it not been implemented in South Africa, where this research really had its genesis?”