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

Early exit transitional 
refers to a model in which instruction in L1 is provided for a few 
years before transitioning (usually very abruptly) to instruction in a foreign language (i.e., 
English or French) prior to the end of primary school. Early exit has been tried in several 
African countries, including Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria, among others, with very poor 
outcomes in terms of both L1 and L2 proficiency, as well as academic achievement. 
Recent evidence from the Kom-language program in Cameroon, for example, showed 
that three years of instruction in L1 was insufficient to adequately prepare learners for 
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For example, in Sweden, education is provided in Swedish to the doctorate level, and English is taught as a 
subject. The same is true in many other European countries, even though the number of speakers of these languages 
is relatively small and the languages are not spoken very much internationally (i.e., Icelandic, Finnish, and 
Norwegian)—the number is even smaller than the number of speakers of many African languages (Hausa, 
Kiswahili, etc.).

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Annex B 
effective transition to L2 instruction. Assessment over time showed that pupils’ scores 
dropped significantly after they transitioned to English-only instruction in the fourth 
grade (Walter & Chuo, 2012). One major reason that early transition from using one 
language of instruction to another does not work is because learners have not acquired 
enough skills in their L1 to transfer them to L2 or a foreign language. Moreover, they 
have not yet acquired sufficient vocabulary and adequate skills in their L2 to learn 
academic content. Furthermore, an “early exit” from one language of instruction to 
another requires most primary teachers to either teach a foreign language or to teach in a 
foreign language (or both), creating a tremendous hurdle for good teaching, since 
teachers themselves may lack foreign language skills sufficient for either or both of these 
scenarios. 
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