Mother Tongue-based Literacy Programmes: Case Studies of Good ...

ForewordEducation for All Goal 6 focuses on the quality of education. Quality education also involves impartinguniversally recognized moral values to the individual and integrating these with the ethnic-specific ecocentricvalues, cultural norms, and worldview. If these are not in place in an education system, a gapbetween the education system and the society will arise. This gap is often a result of using a languageother than the language of the society in providing education. Curricula, syllabi, teaching methodologiesand lesson contents that are not suited to the community situation and a society’s needs contribute tothis gap. The outcome is often an increase in the school dropout rate among minority linguistic and lessprivilegedcommunities.Realizing the importance of mother tongue/bilingual education to improve the quality and reach ofeducation, the Asia-Pacific Programme of Education for All (APPEAL) at UNESCO Bangkok has beensupporting eleven countries to establish mother tongue/bilingual literacy programmes throughout theAsia-Pacific region. Countries undertaking pilot projects include Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India,Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Thailand, Viet Nam, Malaysia and Afghanistan.In a number of participating countries, the project is showing promising results following work doneto develop orthographies for the different languages, create socio-cultural- specific curriculum andteaching-learning materials, and organizing classes for adults and children. The country experiencesfrom the project show that the classes are very effective in transferring knowledge, skills and attitude tolearners and the learner can learn desired skills faster in their mother tongue.This publication, “Mother Tongue-based Literacy Programmes: Case Studies of Good Practice in Asia”presents success stories from mother tongue-based literacy programmes in seven Asian countries. It isdivided into two parts. Part I provides a synthesis of the seven case studies as it discusses the differentsituations, strategies used and activities undertaken.Part II features a more detailed study of each of the projects. Project organizers, themselves, havecontributed these country project studies, which has allowed for the inclusion of much greaterexperiential insight into the projects. Part II covers elements such as selection of project sites, orthographydevelopment, curriculum and materials development, teacher training, organization of classes, resourcemobilization, community participation, project impact, and future directions. It should thus be ofparticular interest to policy makers, planners and programme implementers from both formal and nonformaleducation department, as well as those individuals from non-governmental organizations whoare involved in mother tongue/bilingual literacy activities.People learn to read - to become literate - only once, and they build on that experience to learn otherlanguages. It is our hope that this publication will help to create more literacy programmes that openthe doors of education to much greater numbers of people.Sheldon ShaefferDirectorUNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau forEducation, Bangkok, Thailand[ iii ]