Publications

A Creative Commons guide on how to share resources and creativity, but also maintain a sustainable organization.

This is a PowerPoint presentation on Mango Tree’s methodologies for teaching literacy to young children in Northern Uganda.

Given the complicated and dynamic language situation, the role of language in Indian education has been at the centre of both debate and controversy. The central issue in the last hundred and fifty years has been the medium of instruction. There is evidence to show that before the British rule there was a vigorous system of indigenous education with provision for both sectarian and secular education. However, learning of an elite standard language was always a part of the Indian education system. Before the British, the language of power was Persian, and before that is was Sanskrit. The British debated the issue for many years before deciding in favour of English as the medium of instruction in Indian schools, which accorded prestige to the English language. Even during the British rule, the controversy centred round the question of education through the Indian languages versus English. The entire question of which language was to be the language of instruction at the school level was naturally and intricately linked to the freedom struggle and national identity. The language issue took on a more serious connotation as it became linked to the question of identifying a national language for independent India.

This page provides information on Language Education Policies for numerous countries.

The Language in Education Policy is based on recognition of cultural diversity and the promotion of multilingualism. This policy support the additive multilingualism approach. The Language in Education Policy specifically recognizes diversity beyond language, by supporting languages used for religious purposes, and South African Sign Language.

Section 29(2) of the Constitution provides that every learner has the right to receive a basic education in the language of his or her choice, where this is reasonably practicable. This right is an important recognition of equality and diversity, and the need to depart from a history in which education – and language in education, in particular – was used as a vehicle to implement and strengthen apartheid. Through this right, learners’ diversity and individuality is recognised, and this can facilitate the important objective of unlocking their potential.

In 2006, when the Hewlett Foundation started the Quality Education in Developing Countries initiative, one of the initiative’s goals was to help answer precisely this question. From 2007 to 2013, combining resources with co-funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foundation supported eleven school-level approaches to improving early learning, accompanied by ten rigorous evaluations. The grants spanned India and five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa: Kenya, Uganda, Mali, Senegal, and Ghana. Most organizations focused on improving instructional practice, tackling head-on the fact that teachers are insufficiently prepared to teach reading and math in the early primary grades.

The studies funded by the Foundation constitute a significant contribution to existing evaluation evidence on how to improve student learning. Recent meta-analyses catalogue fewer than 80 randomized studies in the developing world that have examined learning as an outcome variable (McEwan 2013, Krishnaratne et al. 2013). Given the paucity of existing studies, it is still early days for building evidence on what works to improve learning.

The remainder of this paper provides a synthesis of what we know about how to improve learning outcomes. Three areas seem to be critical: (1) improved instruction; (2) strong teacher training and in-school mentoring; and (3) community engagement in learning. The paper concludes with recommendations for carrying this work forward, including ways the results could help shape the future research agenda.

Every citizen has the right to education and culture. Their books must reflect their values and culture and must be relevant to their living circumstances. Only skilled local authors can address such needs. And only a publishing industry based on a multitude of local, autonomous, entrepreneurial publishers can develop the content that gives a nation a distinctive voice, to preserve and develop its own national identity.

Educational publishing is a key sector. Around the world, a healthy, vibrant and dynamic local publishing industry is unthinkable without an equally healthy, vibrant and dynamic educational publishing sector. Its health forms the economic basis for publishing as a whole. Throughout the developing world, local publishing is often threatened by misguided policies.