Language use in education and primary schooling attainment: evidence from a natural experiment in Ethiopia
Year: 2012
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The extensive use of foreign languages in schooling might have an important role to\nplay in the poor educational outcomes observed on the African continent. Exploiting the language\npolicy change of 1994 in Ethiopia as a natural experiment, we estimate the effects of provision of\nmother tongue instruction on the largest ethnic group in the country. Our results suggest that\nprovision of mother tongue education led to an increase of 0.75 to 1 year of primary schooling in the\na....ected cohort. Moreover the entire increase in the years of schooling can be attributed to the\nintensive margin of education. The language policy change, conditional on enrolment, increased the\npercentage of people completing 6 years or more of schooling by 31%. Applying our findings to a set\nof African countries shows that even after accounting for the costs of provision, introduction of\nmother tongue instruction imply potentially large benefits and increases the percentage of population\ncompleting primary schooling by as much as 15% points. These finding have important policy\nimplications at a time when surging enrolment rates and already stretched educational budgets in the\nAfrican continent imply need for solutions which can increase the quality of education without\nrequiring huge capital or infrastructural outlays.
Author: Rajesh Ramachandran
Institution: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2799126513