Abstract
This article examines the role of language policies in mediating access and equity in education. By examining a range of research and case studies on language policies, we explore how educational language policies serve as a central gatekeeper to education itself, as well as to quality education that may fundamentally depend on language ability, not only for literacy and classroom interaction but also for textbooks, materials, assessment, and other language-related aspects of education. Our analysis offers an argument for placing language policies at the center of debates about educational access and equity, as well as a broad range of sociopolitical processes that shape learners’ educational achievement.
We begin with the principles of the concept of “Education for All,” based on the key organizing document (UNESCO, 1990) in the worldwide movement to improve educational access and equity. Then we focus on the role of globalization in the economy and politics, particularly its profound consequences for language learning and language use and its multiple implications for language policies in education. We specify three processes of globalization—migration, urbanization, and changes in the nature of work—that place language policies in education at the center of the processes shaping language learning. Then we examine specific cases in Asia and Europe in which language policies affect educational access and equity. Our emphasis in these cases is primarily on policies and practices of state institutions; due to space limitations, we do not examine the policy implications of important research on micro-level classroom practices (e.g., Pérez-Milans, 2013). Finally, we offer suggestions for how language policies may be used to open greater access and reduce inequalities in education.
Language Policies and Education for All
The international education framework established by UNESCO’s World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand (UNESCO, 1990), prioritizes access and equity in primary education. Since the Jomtien meeting, a commitment to universal access and equity in the quality of educational provision is being extended to other levels of education worldwide, including secondary, tertiary, and lifelong adult education. Although the main goal of the Declaration—universal access to quality primary education—has yet to be achieved, governments have responded with programs that acknowledge the central role of language policies in schools, especially medium of instruction (MOI) policies. Tanzania and Ethiopia, for example, have expanded the use of African languages in education to open access for students who were largely blocked from education when colonial languages were used as the MOI (Alidou, 2004). The value of such policies is well documented, as in the Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa project, which spells out the harmful impact on learning and school participation of the policy of using a colonial language rather than an African language as MOI (Brock-Utne, 2006). Although there are important counterexamples where mother tongue MOI is a component in systems of repression (e.g., apartheid South Africa), there is widespread evidence internationally that mother tongue MOI can significantly reduce barriers to educational access and equity (see Baker, 2011).
In the United States, federal law generally does not address the importance of language in determining access to quality education, although there are exceptions in important court cases, such as the Lau v Nichols decision in 1974 and the Ann Arbor decision in 1979, both of which required schools to provide educational accommodations for students facing the challenge of using a new variety as MOI (Baron, 2011). In many other countries, the language of the classroom has long been recognized as a central factor in educational access and equity. Accordingly, many international agreements and declarations encourage education authorities to use learners’ home languages as MOI. Such documents include the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, which encourages states “to make available primary education in the relevant regional or minority languages,” and the United Nations Universal Declaration on Indigenous Rights, which declares that indigenous people should have “the right to all forms of education, including in particular the right of children to have access to education in their own languages.” Such declarations, however, are usually vague in their requirements and include many qualifications that exempt state authorities from legally binding commitments. For example, the European Charter encourages but does not require mother tongue MOI, and it limits its application to “the territory in which such languages are used, according to the situation of each of these languages” only when the number of children “is considered sufficient” (see Skutnabb-Kangas, 2008; Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 1994).
Nevertheless, many national education authorities specifically acknowledge the impact of language on access and equity. Among these are countries in the Andean region, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, where languages other than Spanish have gained increasing support as MOI (Coronel-Molina, 2013); Nicaragua, where state programs promote language rights for people in the Caribbean Coast region (Freeland, 2013); Wales, particularly in the Welsh–English bilingual schools, which express an ideological commitment to bilingual MOI (Jones & Martin-Jones, 2004); Native America, most prominently in Navajo-medium schools (McCarty, 2013); New Zealand, where Māori MOI has spread from primary to secondary education (Benton, 2007); and Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali, where experimental bilingual programs have been undertaken as part of a long-term effort to change the MOI in primary education (Alidou, 2004). In contexts in which students are forced to acquire a new language for schooling, efforts to achieve access and equity as prioritized by Education for All present a fundamental challenge to education authorities: “Can quality education for all be achieved when it is packaged in a language that some learners neither speak nor understand?” (UNESCO Bangkok, 2007, p. 1).
Research addressing this question is extensive and widely known. In Hong Kong, for example, following the change from English MOI (EMI) to Chinese MOI (CMI) for most schools in 1997-1998, follow-up studies found that graduates of Chinese-medium schools significantly improved scores on standardized exams at the end of secondary school, and improved as well on other measures of learning such as class participation and the quality of verbal interaction (Tsui, 2007). Similarly, following on the Jomtien Declaration, a major study of primary schools in Ethiopia found that MOI is a central factor in children’s achievement, with mother tongue classes proving superior to English MOI during the primary years. MOI for teacher training also has a major impact on children, with teachers whose training takes place in the mother tongue more likely to have the technical and pedagogical vocabulary for teaching school subjects and the necessary confidence in their own language ability. As the final report on Ethiopia states, [C]lassroom observation and assessment data demonstrate that English MOI does not necessarily result in better English learning; in fact, those regions with stronger mother tongue schooling have higher student achievement levels at Grade 8 in all subjects, including English… . These findings are fully supported by international literature on language learning and cognitive development, which show clearly that investment in learning through the mother tongue has short, medium and especially long term benefits for overall school performance and for the learning of additional languages. (Heugh, Benson, Bogale, & Yohannes, 2007, p. 6)
Too often, however, education policymakers do not adequately consider the consequences of language policies for learning, and when they do, they are often faced with difficult decisions when educational and political agendas are in competition (Tsui & Tollefson, 2004). In particular, although there is clear evidence that mother tongue MOI can provide significant educational advantage in most contexts, policymakers often resist this approach for political reasons. When it offers greater educational access to excluded groups, mother tongue MOI may reduce the social, political, and economic advantages enjoyed by privileged groups that control major educational institutions and have easy access to quality education. As a result, policymakers may offer economic rationales (e.g., mother tongue MOI is too expensive) as well as pedagogical ones (e.g., lack of textbooks and materials) for maintaining policies that systematically privilege some groups over others (Tollefson, 2002; UNESCO Bangkok, 2007).
An additional issue of access and equity is whether all learners have the opportunity to acquire dominant languages necessary for higher education and employment. Mother tongue MOI in primary and secondary education may need to be paired with high-quality instruction in additional languages used in higher education and the workplace. Lack of access to such instruction is an important source of economic, social, and political inequality in many settings, such as Bangladesh (Hossain & Tollefson, 2004) and India (Annamalai, 2013).
In addition, standardized tests in a dominant language in which students are not fluent often result in tracking such students into remedial, vocational, or special education programs, due to test scores that do not accurately measure students’ aptitude or achievement. In the United States, the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 means that most linguistic-minority children must take standardized examinations in English, a language in which some students are not proficient. As a result, their ability to meet statewide assessment standards often trails the performance of English-speaking students by 30% to 50% (Abedi & Dietel, 2004).
The distinction between “additive” and “subtractive” bilingual education is relevant here. 1 Many supporters of mother tongue MOI, recognizing that its benefits for subject area learning and educational achievement may be insufficient if higher education and employment require additional languages, argue that equitable education for all must include second-language instruction. Thus high-quality instruction in English aimed at adding English proficiency to individuals’ linguistic repertoire is crucial for educational equity in South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, if all students are to have the opportunity to gain the full benefits of educational provisions (see Fang, 2011).
Globalization And Language Policies In Education
Since the 1980s, language policies have become more important than ever in rationing educational access, due to the triumph of global capitalism and its major social consequences. In the economy, globalization entails a transnational system of corporations with no specific territorial base, finance that is largely unregulated, and weakened nation-states that have lost much of their traditional control over exchange rates and the money supply (Hobsbawm, 1994). In education, globalization has meant the movement toward uniform (“globalized”) curricula that emphasize science and technology rather than humanities and the arts; replacement of teachers’ classroom-based tests with high-stakes standardized assessment; the “deskilling” of teachers (Baumann, 1992) within curriculum-driven programs in which teachers lose control over goals, methods, materials, and assessment; the dominance of commercially prepared materials; the replacement of liberal education with education for employment; the expanding use of English and other standardized and colonial languages as MOI; and the subjugation of education policy to labor policy and national security (cf. the “educational security state”; Spring, 2006). These developments are rationalized by discourses that foreground the instrumental value of “global” languages (especially English), language learning for the national interest, and the opportunities globalization offers for those with education and specific language and literacy skills.
The educational consequences of the global economic crisis that began in 2008 have varied from one context to another. A few states have increased funding for education. In Hong Kong, for example, public funding for higher education grew by 41% from 2007-2008 through 2008-2009 as part of a major transformation of the educational system (in particular, expanding from a 3-year to a 4-year undergraduate degree) and in line with Hong Kong’s commitment to education as a strategic industry (UNESCO Bangkok, 2012). In contrast, the United States and the United Kingdom have reduced public education funding and imposed a variety of neoconservative policies, including shifting costs from the state to individuals, permitting the use of public funds for private schooling, and expanding the number of for-profit schools (Union of Colleges and Universities, 2011). Such changes have had serious educational consequences for the poor, working class, and middle class, specifically limiting access to education. Although employment opportunities have been reduced due to the economic crisis, and increasingly restricted to individuals with secondary and higher education, deep reductions in public funding for education make it more difficult than ever for families to pay for schooling. Moreover, as part of funding cuts and increasing costs to individuals (often rationalized with reference to the economic crisis and monoglossic ideologies of language 2 ), many programs designed to provide educational access for linguistic-minority students have been reduced or eliminated, such as bilingual education, literacy programs, and various forms of classroom support such as bilingual aides (McGroarty, 2013).
Restrictions on access to high-quality education must be understood within the context of three major social changes associated with globalization that specifically affect language policies in education: the migration of labor, urbanization, and the increase in demand for workers with secondary or higher education and with specific skills in language and literacy. First, the migration of labor has been one of the most important social phenomena since the early 20th century. Until the 1980s, migration was largely regulated by the state, and especially in Europe and North America, it was a state-sponsored mechanism for managing labor shortages (Hobsbawm, 1994). More recently, however, migration has not only increased dramatically in scale but also taken place to a growing extent outside state regulation, and although it remains primarily from poor regions toward North America and Europe, it also includes substantial movements into the oil-producing countries of the Middle East and North Africa, city-states such as Singapore and Hong Kong, and special economic zones in many countries worldwide. Second, a major consequence of migration is urbanization, resulting in a major shift in the geographical distribution of the population. In Japan, for example, the proportion of the population involved in farming declined from 52.4% in 1947 to less than 10% by the 1980s. This trend is not only evident in wealthy states, as similar declines have taken place in Latin America and Southeast Asia (International Labour Organization, 1990). Thus, language policies in urban schools have an increasingly important impact on access and equity among the growing population of urban students, particularly as available employment in urban areas requires skills that are normally learned in school. Third, as hundreds of millions of people worldwide have moved to the cities, employment involves new categories of work in business and finance, service industries (e.g., call centers; see Friginal, 2009), government bureaucracy, and aid agencies or other nongovernmental organizations (Clayton, 2006). Many of these jobs require English or other dominant languages (e.g., Chinese in East and Southeast Asia, French in North Africa), as well as literacy and other skills normally learned in school. In addition, since the 1960s, many countries have adopted a policy of universal primary education, thereby dramatically increasing the proportion of the population enrolled in schools (see Eurostat, 2008).
These profound social changes have major consequences for educational language policies that affect equity and access. (a) Migration from rural areas to cities means that rural language varieties are often lost, replaced by dominant varieties spoken by the middle class, government functionaries, and (in some settings such as Pakistan) military officers (Rahman, 2007). (b) These dominant urban varieties are often former colonial languages used for intergroup communication in multilingual cities and as MOI in urban schools. (c) The new categories of work mean that languages of the capital or business become essential for employment, and therefore there is increased pressure to use them as MOI; often this means the use of English, even in contexts where a major national language is dominant (e.g., Japan and China). (d) Although such varieties are important for intergroup communication and MOI in schools, urban centers are also characterized by the phenomenon of superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007), which leads to the emergence of hybrid forms of heteroglossia that do not correspond with traditional conceptions of linguistic boundaries implicit in many language policies and of pidgins, local varieties of English, regional lingua francas, and “cool” urban mixed varieties that signal what Maher (2005) calls “metroethnicity.” (e) In the context of the contraction of the labor market since 2008, the intense competition for places in schools and for new jobs that require literacy and fluency in English (and in other regional and former colonial languages) may lead to the repression of linguistic minorities, with language policies in education an important mechanism of repression (Tollefson, 2013). Such repressive policies have been adopted in the United States, including English proficiency rules in proposals for immigration reform, the loss of bilingual education programs through state measures such as Proposition 227 in California and Proposition 203 in Arizona, and testing policies requiring English-only under the No Child Left Behind law (Wiley & Wright, 2004), as well as in England (including restrictions on the use of immigrants’ languages in education; see Lanvers, 2011), and elsewhere. Thus, with the growing importance of schooling, the implicit language policies and practices of the extended family, which has been the primary institution for intergenerational transmission of languages (Fishman, 2000), have been increasingly overshadowed by the regulatory framework of language policies in schools that favor dominant languages (especially English).
In addition to its impact on learners seeking education in a language in which they are not fluent, globalization also has consequences for speakers of dominant languages in some nation-states with varieties that are almost universally learned in childhood. In Japan, China, and many states in Europe, for example, English promotion policies have been adopted in secondary and higher education; many parents seek to enroll their children in secondary or even elementary schools with English MOI (e.g., international schools in Japan, China, and South Korea). In such settings, one result may be a sense of insecurity about the future of the national language and its associated national identity, leading to ambivalence or resistance to English. In Japan, for example, the promotion of English is mediated by deep suspicion of globalization itself, especially its consequences for Japan, such as increased immigration, wider use of languages other than Japanese, and a perceived loss of security and belonging (Hashimoto, 2013).
Moreover, the claimed link between language and national identity, along with the associated denial of the linguistic complexity of multilingual communities, is often the basis for suppressing minority languages. Many scholarly analyses have not understood well the heteroglossic nature of many environments (both urban and rural), the hybrid linguistic repertoires that are commonplace worldwide, and the sociolinguistic ecology of multilingual regions where cultural groups meet in complex relations of domination and subordination (Freeland, 2013). Thus, schoolchildren may be faced with a new language variety as MOI, in addition to their fluency in multiple, overlapping varieties that do not match well with policymakers’ assumptions about their linguistic repertoire. Often, MOI policies assume a clear demarcation between fixed, distinct standardized varieties, and thus policies may be inappropriate for the complex linguistic ecology of urban neighborhoods (cf. Blommaert, 2012). Indeed, despite recent research that clearly demonstrates highly complex, variable, and fluid language–identity relationships, fundamental assumptions about the direct connection between distinct languages and identities that emerged from 19th century European nationalism continue to underlie language policies in most educational contexts worldwide (Freeland, 2013; McCarty, 2013).
We now turn to cases in which language policies in education—especially policies promoting the use of English as MOI—have important consequences for educational access and equity. We begin with Hong Kong, where debates about the use of Chinese and English as MOI have continued since the resumption of sovereignty by the People’s Republic of China over Hong Kong in 1997.
“Fine-Tuning” Mother Tongue Education Policy in Hong Kong
For several years following the implementation of the “mother tongue” Chinese-medium instruction (CMI) policy in Hong Kong in 1998, the Government Education Bureau publicized the results of the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (a Secondary 5 school–leaving examination) to provide evidence that mother tongue education had helped students to achieve better academic results compared to the days when English or mixed code was used as MOI. For example, in 2005, 7 years after the implementation of the mother tongue policy, the Education Bureau released the following figures: The proportion of all CMI students obtaining five or more subject passes (including Chinese Language and English Language) increased by 5.6% compared with that in 2002, the year when the last cohort sat for the examination before the MOI policy change. Out of more than 200 schools that switched from English-medium instruction (EMI) to CMI in 1998, the number of schools showing an improvement in student attainment increased from 40 schools in 2003 and 80 schools in 2004, to 120 in 2005. Moreover, compared to 2003, 75% (or 150 schools) of the CMI schools attained higher pass rates in English Language (Syllabus B) or credit rates in English Language (Syllabus A; Education and Manpower Bureau [now Education Bureau, Hong Kong SAR], 2005). These results confirmed the findings of an independent study conducted by Marsh, Hau, and Kong (2000) and were subsequently borne out by Li and Majhanovich (2010). However, the picture was somewhat different in the results of the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination, a preuniversity public examination. According to Li and Majhanovich (2010), although there were variations in the passing rates of subjects irrespective of whether or not they were language intensive, the Chinese language showed a steady improvement, with the passing rate reaching the highest ever (94.2%) in 2006, whereas the English language showed a continuous decline after 2005. That result was a great cause for concern, particularly among parents. Although contextual factors contributed to the decline in English, such as the impact on student learning of switching to EMI after 5 years of CMI and the effect of mixed-mode teaching (i.e., teaching materials in English but oral interaction in class in Cantonese, a spoken dialect of Chinese), there was a strong demand from the general public for reinstating EMI in all schools at all secondary levels.
This demand persisted despite the fact that the policy provided better access to higher education for students in CMI schools. According to a large-scale survey conducted by the University of Hong Kong in 2006-2007 on second-year students, who were the first cohort of university entrants since the implementation of the mother tongue policy, out of the 811 respondents, the percentage of students who took Hong Kong A-Levels in Chinese were 12% for science, 14% for mathematics, and 20% for humanities. These percentages, though still the minority, were considerably better than the past, when very few students from CMI schools attained the requisite scores for admission into this university. In other words, the adoption of CMI did allow more students to gain access to a prestigious university education, which in the past was restricted to the English-medium elite.
This outcome notwithstanding, in mid-2009, 10 years after implementation of the mother tongue MOI policy, the Hong Kong SAR government succumbed to political pressure and announced the elimination of the bifurcation of schools into CMI and EMI. Starting from the 2010-2011 school year, at Secondary 1 level, schools were allowed to use EMI or CMI for nonlanguage subjects. Schools that were previously classified as CMI schools are now allowed to adopt EMI for a particular class if 85% of its students are in the top 40% in academic ability. The government emphasized on a number of occasions that this was not a reversal but a “fine-tuning” of the mother tongue education policy. To justify this modification, the Education Bureau (2009) wrote, “Schools are in the best position to keep track of students’ learning progress and teach according to diverse abilities. Accordingly, schools meeting the above criteria should be allowed to determine their professional school-based MOI arrangements.”
This policy has resulted in a diversified mode of MOI in schools: CMI in all nonlanguage subjects for all classes, CMI/EMI in different subjects in different classes, or EMI in all nonlanguage subjects for all classes. This is tantamount to reverting to the practices before the 1998 implementation of the mother tongue education policy (except for closer monitoring by the Education Bureau in implementation of the policy). It is interesting to note that in the 2009 circular announcing the new policy, the discourse of schools exercising their own professional judgment was prominent, in stark contrast to the discourse in the 1998 documents, where the efficacy of mother tongue MOI on student learning was first and foremost (Education Bureau, 2009).
In a study conducted in 1999 on the problems encountered by CMI schools after the implementation of the mother tongue policy, out of 131 CMI schools that responded, 52.7% reported that their better performing students were withdrawing, 32% claimed that the standards of their incoming students were declining, and 25% reported a decline in the number of applicants for Secondary 1 entry (Tsui et al., 1999). Therefore, in 2009, CMI schools were quick to reinstate English-medium teaching in as many classes as possible and to publicize (especially in student recruitment) the number of classes and the subjects taught in English, although no statistics have been disclosed by schools or the Education Bureau regarding the correlation between the academic standards of student intake and the number of EMI classes offered. The situation is paradoxical: On one hand, there was clear evidence that the mother tongue education policy had enabled more students, who were hitherto disadvantaged by learning through English, to have better access to quality higher education. Yet on the other hand, this policy was frowned upon by CMI schools for excluding them from participation in EMI, a much desired model of education, and for the stigmatization they suffered; it was criticized by parents of CMI students for unjustly denying their children access to English; it was denounced by the business sector as aggravating the already declining English standards and hence undermining the competitiveness of Hong Kong; and it was viewed with suspicion by the community as well as by democratic political parties as part of the exercise of sovereignty by the Chinese central government.
Finally, it is important to note that the debate between EMI and CMI ignores hybrid varieties and code mixing commonplace in Hong Kong. At the policy level, the Education Bureau proscribes mixed-code teaching, although students and teachers often ignore this regulation. As in many contexts worldwide, policy-level language instruction assumes rigid boundaries between language varieties, despite the widespread use of creative and complex forms of heteroglossia among teachers and students (Lin, 1996).
Medium of Instruction in Basic and Higher Education in Asia
The past two decades have witnessed a sea change in the landscape of higher education in Asia. First, there is rapid expansion of publicly and privately funded higher education in Asian countries, spurred by the need to produce university graduates with knowledge and skills to meet the needs of economic development. This is achieved partly by upgrading postsecondary education institutions into universities and partly by importing higher education from destination countries. Since the 1990s, “transnational education,” which used to take the form of students completing part of their study in their home countries and part in the degree-offering universities, has taken the form of the latter setting up branch or joint campuses overseas, which is much cheaper than sending students overseas. For example, from 2009 to 2011 there was a 50% increase to 18 campuses in Singapore and a 17% increase to 17 schools in China (Rosenfeld, 2012). In 2012, there were 10 campuses in Malaysia, with 5 more opening soon (“Get to Know,” 2012).
Second, a number of Asian countries aspire to be the educational hub of the region and to achieve high ranking in the various world university rankings. Because internationalization, measured by the percentages of international faculty and students, is one of the major criteria in the ranking metrics, Asian universities have tried to attract as many international students as possible, particularly from the region. For example, the number of international students in Malaysia increased from over 5,600 in 1997 to over 45,600 in 2008. In China, the number of international students reached a record high of over 292,000 in 2011, representing a 10% growth compared to the previous year (“Over 290,000 Foreign,” 2012).
These two major changes resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of English-medium courses and programs in universities. Consequently, the English proficiency level of the secondary school graduates has become increasingly important for students to gain access to prestigious universities.
“Bilingual Education” in China
In recent years, there has been a strong promotion of EMI at all educational levels in China, spearheaded by the Ministry of Education. It is widely known as “bilingual education/teaching” (shuangyu jiaoyu/jiaoxue; Hu, 2009), which means that some or all content subjects are taught in English. In 2002, the Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Education announced that one of the criteria for assessing higher education institutions is that the number of bilingual programs offered in a discipline should be no less than 10%. It also specified that a “bilingual program” is defined as using EMI for no less than 50% of the curriculum time (Ministry of Education, PRC, 2002). Since then, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of bilingual courses/programs offered by universities. Special funding from the Ministry of Finance was provided for universities to develop exemplar “bilingual” courses at 100,000 yuan per course. For example, in 2010, 151 exemplar courses were selected for funding and listed online (Ministry of Education, PRC, 2010). It also provided on the web a list of institutions that offer English-medium programs (updated in 2013; see Ministry of Education, PRC, 2013).
Faced with a shortage of teachers who can teach through the medium of English, schools must provide incentives to attract teachers with high English proficiency, such as higher salary, bonuses, subsidies, promotion, sponsored training, and more favorable workload. Hence, only schools that are well resourced can afford to do so. The resources come not only from government funding but also from charging higher fees and donations from parents. Hence, middle-class parents who are prepared to pay higher fees and donate to the school are much more likely to get their children into bilingual schools than working-class parents who cannot afford to do so (Feng, 2005). In addition, to deal with the shortage of “bilingual” teachers, many local governments and schools have defined the ability to teach content subjects through a foreign language, which is essentially English, as an attribute of a “qualified” teacher in bilingual schools (Feng, 2005). In some schools in Shanghai, for example, teachers are classified as “probationary,” “prospective,” or “qualified” according to their readiness to teach through the medium of English (Shen, 2004). The consequences of these practices are dire: They widen the gap between schools that are well resourced and those that are not within the same city; they exacerbate the chasm between the affluent coastal cities and the poorer inland cities where resources for education are scarce, as well as between the urban and the rural areas; they lead to inequity of access to a mode of education that has been touted by authorities as “quality” education; and they create two classes of teachers, those who possess the symbolic capital, English, and those who do not (Feng, 2009).
English-medium education has also created tension between the majority group, the Han, and the ethnic minority groups, because of inequitable access to English. For the majority group, English is learned as a subject as early as Primary 1 or Primary 3, and for some, even used as an MOI for some subjects. For most minority students, however, English is not taught in the 9-year compulsory education, and for some, English is not taught until university. This is because for these students, Mandarin Chinese is taught as a second language and used as the MOI for content subjects. Therefore, even when English is taught, Mandarin Chinese (referred to as zhongjieyu; “mediating language”), rather than the mother tongue, is used as the medium of teaching and of textbooks (Olan, 2007; see also Xiao, 2003, Xu, 2000, cited in Feng, 2009). This means that ethnic minority students are less likely than Han students to achieve a high level of proficiency in English and hence are less competitive in getting into top universities in China. For example, despite a positive discrimination policy in university admission through the gaokao (the university entrance examination), the increase of minority students’ enrolment in universities is very small compared to the overall growth rate. From 2005 to 2010, the increase for minority students enrolled in universities was around 37% (90,000), compared to the much larger overall growth rate of around 75% (from around 4.7 million in 2005 to 6.3 million in 2010) in undergraduate students in China’s universities (Ives, 2010). Minority students have always been disadvantaged because the MOI in universities has been Chinese, and they have had to take a 1-year remedial course in Chinese. With the rapid increase in the number of English-medium courses and programs, ethnic minority students are further disadvantaged.
Another consequence of the spread of EMI is that in minority regions, minority languages that were previously taught to Han students, to enhance interethnic communication and understanding, are being replaced by English, because Han parents are more interested in their children learning English than a minority language. The displacement of the Uyghur language by English for the Han students in the school curriculum (Tsung & Cruickshank, 2009) and the consistent marginalization of the Uyghur language in universities in Xinjiang is a case in point. This policy accentuates “Han-Chinese ethno-centrism” (Jia, Lee, & Zhang, 2012, p. 177), exacerbates the imbalance in the power relationship between the Han majority and the ethnic minorities, and aggravates the tension and segregation between the Han majority and the ethnic minorities, as evidenced by the widely reported ethnic conflicts in Xinjiang and Tibet.
Access to English and the Social Divide in India
India is a divided society in a number of respects, and the English language has contributed significantly to the divide. English was the language of the elite in the colonial period and is widely seen as a “passport” to the future. However, it is also viewed with suspicion, particularly by the lower caste, as the English-educated elite has marginalized the non–English speaking grassroots. With a rapidly growing middle class able to afford expensive English-medium education and a strong grassroots push for access to English, the teaching of English has been advanced from secondary level to primary level and in public schools to Primary 1. Public policy also avows universal access to English. Nevertheless, access to English is by no means universal, despite the fact that English is now considered a basic skill for children and integrated into the curriculum even in vernacular-medium schools. Only 60% of the 14- to 16-year-old age-group reach secondary education where a second language is used as the MOI, either a regional language, Hindi or English. However, the dropout rate is very high, with only 28% completion rate at Grades 11 and 12. At college or university, a much higher proportion of courses is taught through English, but only 12% of the students can get into universities (Graddol, 2010). Thus, even with much wider access to English in the past 10 years or so, English is still the language of the elite. According to a poll conducted by the Indian television channel CNN-IBN in August 2009, 87% of the respondents felt that English was very important to success in life, but over 80% felt that knowing the state language was also very important, over 60% felt that jobs should be reserved for those who speak the state language, and close to 60% felt that English made them forget their mother tongue (see Graddol, 2010). In other words, although English is still a much-desired commodity, the tension between English and the vernacular languages has not attenuated.
English often enters political debates in India and is used by politicians as a platform to gain the support of their constituencies. Aware of the tension between English and the regional languages, most politicians will not address a rally in English, which is seen as not the language of the “commoners.” On the other hand, within the English-speaking circle, politicians who are not able to speak English fluently are often ridiculed. For example, in a recent report in Wall Street Journal-India headlined “Mamata Banjeree on the Great English Language Divide,” it was reported that Mamata Banjeree, the vocal West Bengal Chief Minister, in response to criticisms of her opposition to key policy initiatives of the central government, pointed out that the English-educated “Delhi people” did not understand local issues and that her English was poor because she was a “commoner”: “We are from the very middle class family. We have not come from the English-medium school. We came from our regional languages school” (Stancati, 2012). She further pointed out that because her English was poor, she was often misinterpreted and harshly treated by critics and the press. It is worth noting that although English is pitched against regional languages in political debates, it is also used as a tool to resist domination of one vernacular language over another. Some of the southern states have chosen English rather than Hindi as the official language as a form of resistance against domination by the northern states.
Medium of Instruction in Malaysia
Whereas in China and India English-medium education has created tension between the ethnic groups because of inequitable access to English, in Malaysia, the switch to English MOI at all three levels of the education system in 2002 created tension of a different kind. After independence from British colonial rule in 1957, Bahasa Malaysia was adopted as the national language. However, a mother tongue education policy was adopted under the 1957 Education Ordinance (Ministry of Education, 1957) for all ethnic groups, so that the language and culture of ethnic groups other than the Malays would be preserved and sustained. Hence the national education system comprised two types of schools, the Malay-medium national schools and the vernacular-medium “national type schools.” This system allowed Chinese-medium and Tamil-medium schools to grow, with the former flourishing because of the high-quality teaching and outstanding academic achievements of their graduates. However, after the Education Act in 1961 mandated that the national language, Malay, be adopted as the MOI for all schools, funding for schools that retained the vernacular as an MOI was greatly reduced. According to the Centre for Public Policy Studies (2012) in Kuala Lumpur, the recent budget allocation for vernacular schools was only 2.4% to 3.6% of the entire education budget. This step created grave concern among the Chinese, the second largest ethnic group in Malaysia (with a quarter of the population). Keen to ensure that their culture, language, and ethnic identity were maintained and confident that Chinese-medium education was best for their children, the Chinese raised funds from their own community to support Chinese-medium schools. There are now 1,293 Chinese-medium primary schools (Centre for Public Policy Studies, 2012) and 60 Chinese independent secondary schools in Malaysia (Arifin, 2012).
The consequence of the implementation of the Malay-medium education policy was contrary to what the Malaysian government had intended. Instead of raising the status of the Malay language and uniting the nation through its use, the policy led to further tension between the Malays and the ethnic minorities. The publicly funded universities in Malaysia were Malay medium, whereas the privately funded universities had the autonomy to use English as the MOI. As a result, graduates of English-medium universities, because of their high proficiency in English, were keenly sought by the private sector, which offers much higher pay and better career prospects. The overwhelming majority of graduates of Malay-medium public universities, because of their poor English, ended up with less well-paid jobs in the government, where English skills were not as crucial. Even though Malays make up 65% of the population, Chinese 26%, and Indians 7.7%, the jobs in the private sector have gone mainly to the Chinese and the Indians, whereas 94% of the jobs in the government have been taken by Malays, and only 3.7% by Chinese and 1.7% by Indians (Gill, 2007). To ensure that the Malays would not continue to be disadvantaged, then–Prime Minister Mahatir Mohammed decided that English-medium education should be adopted in publicly funded schools for the teaching of science and mathematics starting with Primary 1, Secondary 1, and Lower 6 in the first year and moving up to higher levels in the following years.
This reversal of MOI policy provided greater access to English, but it was not welcomed by the Chinese community, where it was perceived as a threat to the mother tongue education system and to the distinctiveness of Chinese-medium schools. It was argued that science and math were best learned through the mother tongue, as evidenced by the outstanding academic achievements of Chinese children. Consequently, after intense negotiations between the leaders of the Chinese community and the Malaysian government, a compromise was reached in which CMI would be used predominantly for mathematics and science and English MOI only for a couple of hours in the total lesson hours per week.
In Hong Kong, working-class and middle-class parents, whether English speaking or non–English speaking, even those who know that their children would learn better through their mother tongue, have fought vehemently for English-medium education. Similarly, in China and India, access to English is given priority over quality of learning. By contrast, in Malaysia, Chinese parents fought to maintain mother tongue education because it guarantees high-quality learning. What appears to be contradictory is not really so, however, if we see it from the perspective of whether the choice of MOI restricts or facilitates access to further education and future careers. The Chinese community in Malaysia—middle class and with the resources to send children to private universities in Malaysia or prestigious overseas universities—can ensure that their children are able to cope with English-medium higher education, and thus Chinese-medium schooling is seen as pedagogically superior.
Globalization and English in Japan
The spread of English also has consequences for educational equity in contexts characterized by nearly universal access to education. One such case is Japan, where, in 2002, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, Sports and Technology adopted its “strategic plan to cultivate Japanese with English abilities” (Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, Sports and Technology, 2002). Since then, the study of English has spread into primary schools and the use of English as MOI has been extended to English language classes in secondary schools, to a system of elite “super-English high schools” and to a growing number of programs in higher education (Hashimoto, 2013). An increasing body of evidence, however, suggests that the promotion and use of English provide significant educational and employment advantage only for a small proportion who have access to high-quality instruction and to opportunities to use English outside school, whereas most students gain little benefit from their many hours of study of English.
As in many contexts, English in Japan (particularly in higher education) is rationalized with an elite discourse of “globalization-as-opportunity” (Yamagami & Tollefson, 2011), which often appears in university promotional materials for English MOI programs. Promotion of English-medium higher education is also aimed at attracting more students from abroad, yet public discussion about globalization and international student enrollment is often embedded in a discourse of “globalization-as-threat” that focuses on immigration, such as manufacturing workers of Japanese descent from Brazil and Peru, health care providers from Indonesia and Philippines, students from China, and unskilled workers in “three-K jobs” (kitsui, kitanai, and kiken; hard, dirty, and dangerous) from China and elsewhere (see Tabuchi, 2009). This nationalist counterdiscourse is skeptical of English promotion policies rationalized by a discourse of globalization-as-opportunity (Yamagami & Tollefson, 2011).
One reason for resistance to English may be the growing recognition that the promotion of English offers economic advantages mainly to a small number of middle- and upper middle-class individuals who gain employment in transnational corporations, international organizations such as the United Nations, and nongovernmental organizations (Kobayashi, 2007). The high wage structure of Japan severely limits the growth of domestic industries that might offer expanded employment for other English learners in fields such as medical transcription and call centers (see Friginal, 2009). Thus, the case of Japan suggests that the impact of language policies on equity and access in different settings must be understood within the specific economic context (also see Nakanishi, 2006).
The Rise of China and the Learning of Mandarin Chinese
The rise of China as a major economic power has led to important changes in language policies and language curriculum in many parts of the world. In Hong Kong, many schools have incorporated the teaching of Putonghua in the curriculum, although it is not mandated, and many school activities have used Putonghua as a medium of communication alongside English. Universities in Hong Kong have set up centers for administering the official tests of Putonghua on behalf of the Ministry of Education in China, and the number of students taking these tests (and studying privately) has increased substantially (Tian, 2007).
In Malaysia, there have been increasing cultural exchanges between Malaysian and Chinese universities, and a growing number of non-Chinese students attend schools that use Chinese as an MOI in morning sessions and Malay in the afternoon. In the year 2000, more than 60,000 non-Chinese students, mostly Malays, enrolled in Chinese-medium primary schools because of the importance of Chinese, the excellent results in math and science in Chinese schools, and better job opportunities on graduation. Whereas the older generation of teachers in Chinese schools speak Chinese as a second language, the younger generation of teachers speak Chinese as their mother tongue (Hashim, 2009).
In Singapore, promotion of English as the lingua franca and English-medium education have led to a drastic reduction of the number of Chinese-medium schools. In 1980, the merging of Nanyang University, a Chinese-medium institution, with the University of Singapore to form the National University of Singapore, which is an English-medium university, led to the demise of Chinese-medium schools in the 1980s. Since then, the percentage of the population who speak English as a home language has risen dramatically from 9% in 1980 to 32% in 2010. Among school-age children (5-14 years old), close to half (48%) spoke English as a home language in 2010 compared to 32% in 2000. The trend for speaking Mandarin as a home language is the reverse: 42% of school children spoke Mandarin at home in 2000, but the percentage dropped to 31% in 2010. In other words, English is becoming the dominant home language.
Although Chinese is a compulsory subject at school and passing the subject is a prerequisite for college and university entrance, because there is little or no need to use the language in everyday life and it is not an MOI at university, there is little incentive for students to achieve a high level of proficiency. In 1999, a review led by then–Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong acknowledged that many so-called mother tongue Chinese children had little or no exposure to Chinese at home. Therefore, an alternative examination syllabus, Syllabus B, requiring a lower level of proficiency, was designed for the majority of the students, whereas the Higher Chinese Language Syllabus was retained for the elite. To ensure that schools produce graduates with high proficiency not only in English but also in Chinese, the government has designated a small number of elite schools (11 in total) where both English and Chinese are used as an MOI for some subjects. In 2011, a Language Review Committee led by the Director General of Education made recommendations to improve the proficiency levels of Chinese and the teaching of Chinese, including a proposal to make it “a living language” that is not just used in the classroom and examinable but also used to communicate effectively in real-life settings (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2011, p. 14).
Since the 1990s, the question of whether Mandarin Chinese will overtake English as the global lingua franca has often been raised. Reported figures about the number of learners of Mandarin Chinese suggest a sharply rising worldwide trend that has created unease, especially in the English-speaking countries. In 2006, it was estimated that 30 million people were studying Mandarin Chinese and that the number would grow to 100 million in a few years’ time. Observing that Mandarin Chinese has emerged as a “must-have” language in Asia and elsewhere, Graddol (2006) compares the rush to learn Chinese in South Korea to the earlier rush to learn English.
Nevertheless, English continues its domination. In a speech in 2009, Chinese Premier Wen Jia Bao claimed that in China there were 300 million learners of English (Bardsley, 2011). According to Graddol (2010), the number of speakers of English in India is estimated to be between 55 million and 350 million. Given that the U.S. economic and geopolitical power is unlikely to decline precipitously, Bruthiaux (2009) argues that it is highly unlikely that Mandarin Chinese will become the dominant language of global communication, although it is likely to provide better access to educational opportunities and increasing economic advantages to middle- and upper-class learners able to develop fluency in it.
Internationalization of Higher Education and Moi Policy in Continental Europe
In Europe, more than 60 regional and minority languages are currently spoken. With 23 official languages, the European Union’s official language policy claims to protect linguistic diversity and promote multilingualism for preservation of cultural identity, social cohesion, and intercultural understanding. The member states of the European Union are required to commit themselves to teaching the languages of the other states and to encouraging their citizens to learn at least two languages other than their mother tongue. The European Commission (2000) declares that all languages in Europe are “equal in value and dignity from the cultural point of view and form an integral part of European cultures and civilization.” In 2003, a detailed plan consisting of 45 actions was adopted by the European Commission to extend the learning of languages to all educational levels, including adult education; to improve the quality of language education; and to create an environment favorable to language learning (European Commission, 2004). In 2008, the European Commission specified actions that need to be taken to make linguistic diversity an asset for solidarity and prosperity.
Within this context, the use of English as a dominant MOI has become a major phenomenon only in the past 20 years (Bruthiaux, 2009). When the policy was first mooted in some countries, strong objections were raised (e.g., in 1990, when the Dutch Minister of Education proposed making English the official language of instruction at Dutch universities; see Brock-Utne, 2007; Höglin, 2002). Despite objections to such policies, the number of programs switching to English has increased dramatically, especially since the launch of the Bologna Process in 1999 to create a European Higher Education Area to facilitate the transferability of credits and degree qualifications among universities in continental Europe. The need to have a common language to facilitate staff and student mobility, particularly the latter, has led to an explosion of the number of courses and programs delivered through the medium of English. Indeed, as Phillipson (2009) observed, in the Bologna Process, “internationalization” means English-medium higher education. The move to English-medium education is further accelerated by the fact that internationalization of higher education is one of the key profile indicators in international rankings of universities, including the Times Higher Education University Ranking and the QS World Ranking. To obtain higher scores in these international rankings, the recruitment of staff and students outside the home country has become an essential part of the strategic plan of nearly all universities.
The result is an exponential growth of the number of English-medium programs in the past 10 years. In 2001-2002, according to a survey conducted by the Academic Cooperation Association (reported in Coleman, 2006), among the 1,558 higher education institutes in 19 continental European countries, only 30% had one or more English-medium program (Maiworm & Wächter, 2002; also see Wächter, 2008), but in a follow-up study in 2006-2007 in 27 European countries, 2,400 degree programs were taught in English (Wächter & Maiworm, 2008; see also Gill & Kirkpatrick, 2013). The consequence is that English is even used to teach courses that would be better taught in the mother tongue (e.g., a German student studying Kant in English).
Another significant impact of internationalization in higher education is on the language of research and scholarship, which increasingly favors English. In the Times Higher Education ranking, publishing with researchers outside the home country accounts for one third of the scores for international outlook. Moreover, in the scores for research and publication, the citation of published work and journal quality are largely based on impact factors as reflected in a citation index, which favors publications in English, which have the largest readership. Research assessment exercises and promotion and tenure also increasingly favor English-language publication. To encourage more publications in English, European universities have various incentive measures in place. In Norway, for example, the Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions proposed in 2004 a reward system that ranked journals and publishing companies according to three levels (UHR, 2004). According to Brock-Utne (2007), of the 486 ranked publishing companies listed on the Internet, more than 80% ranked at Level 2 (the highest level) were U.S. publishing companies, and no Norwegian publishing house was given similar ranking; and out of some 170 journals (of 1,700 total) that were ranked Level 2, only 4 were published in Norwegian. This situation has also affected research students’ work. In the University of Iceland, for example, doctoral theses in the Faculties of Social Sciences and Medicine are required to be written in English whereas those in the Humanities can be written in English or Icelandic (Hilmarsson-Dunn, 2009). Monetary incentive is also provided to doctoral students for writing their theses in English (e.g., the University of Oslo; see Brock-Utne, 2007).
The effect of English-medium higher education on secondary education is that English has to be taught at a higher level of proficiency and students must be prepared to deal with academic texts in English. Hence, the learning of English has been advanced to the beginning of primary education. The teaching of a foreign language through content subjects, referred to as Content and Language Integrated Learning, has been strongly promoted by the European Commission for all levels of school education. Although the languages taught through Content and Language Integrated Learning in principle include national, regional, and minority languages, English is far ahead of all other languages in all countries (European Commission, 2006).
In sum, it is clear that English has become a basic skill that must be mastered and a daily necessity that one cannot do without. Thus, the educational achievement of anyone with limited access to high-quality English learning will be restricted. However, with increased mobility across the globe, with the emergence of multiple centers of political and economic power, and with the increasingly porous boundaries of all kinds, it is no longer enough to be proficient only in English. Knowledge of a third or fourth language, and an understanding of the culture associated with it, will soon be a basic necessity across the globe. With unequal access to high-quality instruction in multiple languages, inequities in educational opportunities and outcomes are likely to increase in the years ahead.
Conclusion: Reducing Inequality and Improving Access
MOI policies increasingly affect educational access and equity, especially in light of the growing importance of language policies in schools and the processes of globalization that have increased the importance of language-related skills for education and employment. Although in many contexts MOI policies exacerbate problems of access and equity in education, we end our analysis with ways that MOI policies may improve educational opportunities and outcomes, briefly illustrated with the cases of New Zealand, Solomon Islands, and Native America.
New Zealand is a rare case of a suppressed indigenous language adopted as an official language at the national level. This achievement was the result of efforts made by the Māori working outside the official educational system, to develop independent Māori-medium preschools in the early 1980s (see May, 2004). The success of this movement in revitalizing Māori knowledge and cultural practices led to the spread of Māori-medium education to other levels of schooling and, in 1990, to official recognition of the Māori schools as part of the state education system.
In the case of Solomon Islands, where more than 70 indigenous languages compete with English and Solomons Pijin, the failure of rural education has been intensified by the spread of English MOI and by the recent violence and civil war (1998-2003), which has led to the collapse of education in some areas and the migration of thousands of Kwara‘ae-speaking Malaitans from the island of Guadalcanal back to their native island of Malaita (Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo, 2002, 2013). With local schools failing to respond to the educational needs of Malaitan children (many of whom were traumatized by violence and forced migration), the Malaitan community has responded with revitalized community education based on indigenous Malaitan culture and epistemology.
Education in Native American schools, particularly in Navajo communities in the U.S. Southwest, includes indigenous languages used as MOI. Schools using Navajo as MOI have been particularly successful, with the Rough Rock Community School in Chinle, Arizona, founded in 1966, gaining recognition as a model for indigenous MOI schools worldwide (McCarty, 2013).
The cases of New Zealand, Solomon Islands, and Native America suggest five generalizations about MOI policies that can help achieve greater access and equity in education:
The importance of self-determination in school administration and MOI policymaking: Māori MOI in New Zealand was a direct result of the community’s efforts to create and control schools that only later gained official support. In Solomon Islands, central education authorities failed to understand or support policies that would serve the needs of Kwara‘ae-speaking Malaita youth; only after community leaders took control of educational policies have these needs begun to be addressed. In the Southwest United States, Navajo-medium schools are community institutions, largely controlled by the community for the community’s benefit.
The value of an ideology and discourse to support mother tongue MOI: In New Zealand, the recent discourse of bilingual and bicultural Aotearoa/New Zealand identity has provided an ideological and discursive framework for the promotion of Māori MOI. This framework includes appeals to the dominant non-Māori, English-speaking population. In Solomon Islands, a commitment to indigenous praxis provides a powerful framework for promoting Kwara‘ae-medium education. In the United States, Navajo MOI has been articulated within the framework of Native American self-determination, which provides some protection against the powerful English-only ideology that is directed primarily against speakers of Spanish and African American Vernacular English.
The importance of using the legal context to promote MOI policies for access and equity: In New Zealand, the Treaty of Waitangi and the Māori Language Act of 1987 provide a legal framework for the spread of Māori MOI. In the United States, among other laws, the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, the Native American Languages Act of 1990, and the Native American Housing and Self-Determination Act of 1996 provide a legal framework for the promotion of Native American MOI.
The value of historical precedents: In New Zealand, early mission schools offered Māori MOI. In Solomon Islands, the development of indigenous pedagogy, in response to the abysmal condition of education on the island of Malaita, can be traced to the 1980s, long before the recent conflict. In Native America, the history of Native-language MOI, disrupted by the period of American conquest, means that Navajo MOI schools are, in a sense, a return to a long tradition of Navajo MOI.
The importance of MOI policies that fill specific, identifiable needs: In New Zealand, Māori preschools emerged from the need for quality child care services; as preschool children moved into primary schools, parents wanted to continue Māori language learning and use, and thus Māori MOI at the primary level was adopted. In Solomon Islands, the failure of traditional schools to confront the disruption of war and migration offered an opening for new forms of community education for children from Malaita. In Native America, isolated communities require local institutions that offer a broad range of social services and support. In that context, indigenous MOI is an obvious policy approach.
Thus, despite ample evidence of educational inequities associated with MOI policies worldwide, these cases suggest that policies can be adopted to open access and reduce inequities in education.