Here’s what this means for children, teachers and the
nation.
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| A child playing on the outskirts of Kigali, Rwanda, on Oct. 17, 2019. (-/Afp Via Getty Images) |
By Timothy P. Williams
In December, Rwanda’s government announced that
all Rwandan primary schools should teach in English, a language that many teachers
in the country cannot understand or speak. This is the third
time in 11 years that the government has introduced a major language
shift. Education officials, donors and others are now scrambling to
respond.
What’s behind these shifts in the language of
instruction? And what are the wider implications? Here’s what you need to know.
1. Here’s what just changed
This new plan requires schools to teach in English
starting in the first grade. Yet many primary schoolteachers in Rwanda don’t
speak English — a 2018
study found that just 38 percent of those teachers likely to be
affected by the new change have a working knowledge of English. This statistic
likely obscures much lower percentages of spoken English in rural areas outside
of Rwanda’s Anglophone-friendly capital city of Kigali.
Analysts cite concerns about
the lack of evidence and planning in the government’s announcement. The
decision also appears to reject the scientific
evidence that suggests primary schoolchildren may learn best in their
first language.
2. This isn’t the first attempt to shift to English
Over the last decade, Rwanda has introduced several
language changes without
much evidence of planning. Before 2008, teachers taught primary
students using the local language, Kinyarwanda, before switching to French in
fourth grade. But that October the government announced it was changing the
language of instruction used in all schools to English. The Ministry of
Education ran a crash course for teachers in English over the term break and expected
them to use English in early 2009.
Things didn’t go well. After three years, eight
in 10 teachers still had a “beginner” or “elementary” knowledge of
English. Under pressure from
international donor agencies, the government modified the
policy in 2011: teachers would use Kinyarwanda for the first three years of
instruction and then shift to teaching in English for the upper three grades of
primary school.
Switching the language of instruction would be difficult
in any
context, but the lack of planning compounded the challenge. Normally,
education officials make policy decisions in Rwanda through strategic planning
processes that guide priorities and budgeting. But Rwanda’s presidential
cabinet bypassed these
processes to issue the 2008 language directive. Some primary
schoolteachers resorted
to translating their old French textbooks to plan for lessons.
In a 2012 interview,
former director of the Rwanda Education Board, John Rutayisire, explained the
government’s rationale behind the rapid changes: “We were not prepared to wait
for the conventional 10 or 20 years to adopt a more strategic longer plan,
because the interests of this country are more paramount than the difficulties
that people can face in the shorter term,” he said.
Experts
expressed concern at the time that the lack of planning would allow only
the most privileged or talented students to stand a chance of doing well in
school. More than 10 years later, this appears to still be the case: 44 percent of sixth
graders are illiterate in English, a figure that is likely much lower
in rural
parts of the country. It means that these children take their
pivotal leaving
examinations in a language they don’t understand.
3. What explains the politics behind this move?
It’s clear that the December 2019 language shift will
pose a heavy burden on children and teachers across the country, particularly
in poor rural areas that already
struggle to attract qualified teachers. So why did the government
decide to do this?
The shift aligns with the government’s cultural
alliances and economic ambitions by facilitating regional integration
and positioning the country in the global market economy. In 2007, it joined
the East African Community, which is predominantly Anglophone. In 2009 Rwanda
joined the Commonwealth and will host a
heads-of-government meeting in June of this year.
Domestic power dynamics matter, too. Rwanda’s ruling
party, the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), sought to distance
itself from its Franco-Belgian colonial roots — and specifically
France and its alleged
complicity in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. Many of the core
members of the RPF grew up in exile in Uganda and studied English. Thus, some
scholars see the efforts to switch to English as a power move benefiting
those in key positions of influence.
But not all Rwandans experience language changes equally.
Wealthier families can send their children to private
primary schools. These schools have more resources, including
English-speaking teachers, and they can better manage the shocks of an
education system whose language policies are in constant flux. Children from
poor households, in contrast, go to government schools where teachers often
have a limited grasp of English, and where teaching and learning
materials are
scarce.
4. What happens now?
The newest language change puts students and teachers in
a difficult situation. Many teachers will be required to teach in a language
they don’t know. For students, instruction — and testing — will be in a
language most parents don’t speak at home and that children don’t understand.
There is also a growing
concern that the focus on English is putting children’s learning
— in
any language — in greater peril. Rwanda’s leadership has committed to
introducing policies that are inclusive of all Rwandans, and its push to expand access to education for
all children is an example of this. But
some local media outlets now question how the most recent move fits
into the leadership’s plans to improve education quality. In absence of
planning, the language change will disproportionately burden children and
teachers in poor rural areas, deepening a divide between an urban Anglophone
elite and the rest of the country.
A few days after announcing its December 2019 language
change, the government appeared to backtrack slightly. It issued another statement that
the shift to English will happen “within a determined period to be communicated
by the Ministry of Education,” resulting in an uneasy status quo. The ministry
has not publicly offered any further details of when or how this change will
happen.
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