EdData II: Data for Education Research and Programming (derp) in Africa

3.7 
Develop and implement a language policy and/or language plan
Language mapping, foot-in-the door activities (see text box below), and pilot projects can all 
help build support for effective approaches for language use in education. Ideally these 
approaches should be codified into official policy that establishes an agreed-upon approach that 
all stakeholders and education institutions can reference with regards to planning for language 
use in education. The policy should be clear and concise, yet should be flexible enough to allow 
for local decision-making and adaptation as required. It should be based on broad stakeholder
Teacher language proficiency: Realistic expectations 
Experience suggests that it is unrealistic to expect the majority of a 
country’s teaching workforce to be skilled at teaching subject 
matter, at teaching languages as a subject, 
and 
at
 
teaching subject 
matter in an L2, an expectation in many countries in sub-Saharan 
Africa. Efforts to improve teacher language proficiency in an L2/Lx 
that is ostensibly a foreign language is likely to be unsuccessful on 
a wide scale. For example, despite major investments in English-
language training in Ethiopia several years ago (the federal 
government committed 41% of the education budget to improving 
220,000 teachers’ English-language skills), follow-up revealed that 
little sustained improvement was achieved (Heugh et al., 2007). 
Ethiopia has since devoted significant investments (through USAID 
support; see previous text box) toward providing education in 
national languages, including teacher training. Countries that wish 
to provide instruction in L2/Lx should consider identifying a cadre of 
language specialists skilled at L2 language instruction to enable 
teachers to focus on content knowledge. 

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