LAHORE: Educationists and other stakeholders of primary school education believe that making Urdu a medium of classroom instruction (MOI) will help students get rid of rote learning and build their capacity to understand subject more effectively.

The Punjab government recently announced changing the medium of learning in primary classes in schools from English to Urdu from the next academic session beginning in March on the basis of a research conducted in 22 districts of the province.

Former chief minister Shahbaz Sharif conducted exhaustive consultations through education consultant Sir Michael Barber, and introduced English as a medium of instruction in the public sector schools. The government has been facing problems as its enrollment campaigns are failing to meet targets and a large number of children are out of schools.

The research document available with Dawn overwhelmingly indicates that using the language of common use, in this case, Urdu as the MOI would boost learning.

Other findings include that English as the MOI in most Pakistani schools does not help children learn English better. The usage of English as the MOI presupposes the availability of teachers that demonstrate excellent English language skills. It also requires immersive experiences in the use of language in and out of the school premises. In the absence of these conditions the pupils are taught to rote/memorise the contents of English lessons.

The results of the recent Mixed Indicators Cluster Survey and Annual Status of Education Report suggest that despite using English as the MOI in the past decade, less than 50 percent of Punjab’s girls and boys can read even basic English words. English as the MOI hampers learning of mathematics and science and that English in multilingual context adversely affects quality of mathematics instruction. For instance, multilingual classrooms have shown that students tend to memorise contents of the textbooks when concepts cannot be explained well in English.

Also, using mother tongue/language of common use as the MOI can boost the later development of English language skills. The usage of English as an MOI is observed to hinder learning, using a proximate language as MOI appears to boost it.

A recent study in South Africa that used longitudinal data from the population of primary schools and a fixed-effects approach, found that mother tongue instruction in the early grades significantly improved English acquisition, as measured in grades 4, 5 and 6.

This finding is supported by the emerging evidence from the work of The Citizen’s Foundation in Pakistan, where the schools use language of common use as the MOI.

Also, studies conducted in Pakistan also argue for a graduated approach to the learning of English, starting in the early grades with the mother tongue/language of everyday use and transitioning to English with an initial focus on developing communication skills. English could ultimately become the MOI provided children developed their cognitive schemas in their proximate language first.

The School Education Department took the decision to use Urdu as the MOI first it would help improve learning of English at later levels (as well as use of English as MOI at the middle and secondary level).

University of Education Vice-Chancellor Rauf-i-Azam told Dawn that they conducted trainings for thousands of teachers but their capacity teach in English could not be improved.

He said national and international researches were suggesting that education, especially primary, be given in mother tongue of the learner. “It’s a good decision by the government to change MOI from English to Urdu,” he said.

He said students would be given instructions in mother tongue because it would clear their concepts about different subjects and English should be taught as a subject.

Mr Azam said even university teachers could not give their complete lecture in English and how it would be possible that a school teacher could do so. “Most of the university teacher run slide during lectures in English language but they are delivering it in Urdu, Punjabi, Seraiki, Pushto and Brahvi languages,” he said.

Punjab Teachers Union (PTU) Secretary Rana Liaqat said that school teachers did not have capacity to teach students in English and mostly of them use Urdu as the MOI. “We also have given our input to change means of instruction,” he said.

He said students used Urdu keys to understand the concepts and school education was suffering due to inconsistent policy of the governments. “I even know Urdu is like a foreign language for most parts of the country but it is now understandable widely,” he said.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2019