Conference on Multilingual
Education Produces Policy Guide
ADEA has long advocated mother-tongue education as one of the best ways to increase the effectiveness of teaching and learning in education systems. The ADEA Biennales on educational quality and the Conference on Bilingual Education and the Use of Local Languages in African Education Systems, held in 2005 in Windhoek and organized by ADEA, UIL, GTZ and the Ministry of Education of Namibia, widely disseminated case studies and reviews demonstrating the effectiveness of models that begin by teaching the fundamentals in the mother tongue and then gradually introduce a cross-border African language and/or a widely used international language.
Going beyond advocacy, the African Conference on the Integration of African Languages and Cultures into Education, held in Ouagadougou on 20-22 January 2010, tackled the issue of successful implementation of multilingual and multicultural policies. It recognized that the promotion of African languages and cultures is, on the one hand, a factor of social cohesion at country level and of integration at the regional and continental levels, and on the other, an essential means of transforming African societies with a view to sustainable, balanced economic and social development.
The main outcome of the conference was the adoption of a policy guide for successful integration of African languages and cultures into education. The guide covers the questions that determine whether the implementation of such policies will succeed or fail: the need to establish political and legislative frameworks; the development of monitoring and evaluation strategies; awareness raising and advocacy, simultaneously with the development of regional networks; institutional strengthening and capacity building; evaluation of learning outcomes and monitoring; curriculum development and training of personnel; research.
The ministers, education professionals, experts and researchers from the 23 countries represented also adopted a communiqué requesting governments to facilitate the organization of partnerships with the research and education communities and between the public and private sectors, to set up inter-country quality nodes and to place the subject of the Ouagadougou conference on the agenda of the next session of the Conference of Ministers of Education of the African Union. ADEA, UNESCO/UIL, UNESCO/BREDA and Burkina Faso’s Ministry of Basic Education and Literacy will follow up on the recommendations of the conference, in particular by supporting countries in implementing the operational provisions of the policy guide, with support from technical and financial partners.
The Conference on the Integration of African Languages and Cultures into Education was jointly organized by the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and the Ministry of Basic Education and Literacy of Burkina Faso, with funding from the Education Program Development Fund (EPDF) and BMZ/GTZ (German cooperation).
Additional information:
Contact: ADEA Secretariat, adea@afdb.org |
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