A study by scientists have revealed that using English as medium of instruction for very young, mainly underprivileged children in India may be a hindrance in learning basic school skills.
Researchers are trying to find out as to why Indian children who normally know more than one language do not enjoy the same cognitive and learning advantages as that of multilingual students in the West.
Researchers from the University of Reading in the UK and project partners in Karnataka, Hyderabad and New Delhi have come together to find out why in a country where multilingualism is so common, the benefits and advantages of speaking more than one language are not visible. Instead, Indian children show low levels of learning basic school skills, researchers said. Professor Ianthi Tsimpli from Cambridge University in the UK and her colleague are trying to find out the answers to this by studying a dataset of more than 1,000 primary-age schoolchildren across Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bihar. After working for two years on the project, the team has discovered significant variation in the provision of education across government schools in the three areas, with different teaching practices and standards. The team will now begin retesting them, looking not only at test results but also allowing for other variables such as the standard of schooling, the environment and the teaching practices themselves.
One of the causes of low performance of the students can be the lack of pupil-centered teaching methods and there is little room for independent learning.
Although the findings are at an initial stage, researchers have found that the medium of instruction used in schools which is mainly English, may hold back those children who have little familiarity with, or exposure to, the language before starting school and outside of school life.
“Most of the evidence from this and other projects show that English instruction in very disadvantaged areas might not be the best way to start, at least in the first three years of primary,” said Tsimpli.“What we would recommend for everyone, not just low socio-economic status children, would be to start learning in the language they feel comfortable learning in,” she said.“The medium of instruction should reflect the strengths of the child. When it does, that, the child will learn better. English can still be used, but perhaps not as the medium of instruction in primary schools,” she recommended.“It could, for example, be one of the subjects that are being taught alongside other subjects, starting perhaps from the third year of primary school,” Tsimpli added. The research has supposedly caught the attention of Delhi’s Minister for Education, Manish Sisodia, who is keen to use the findings to inform and adjust school policy in the capital city.