conference on bilingual education

HELPING CHILDREN LEARN:

An International Conference on Bilingual Education in Timor-Leste Volume One

Held by the Ministry of EducationSponsored by UNICEF, UNESCO and CARE International

17-19 April 2008, Dili, Timor-Leste

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, states that all children have the right to education (Article 28), and the right to learn and use the language of their family (Article 30).

HELPING CHILDREN LEARN:

An International Conference on Bilingual Education in Timor-Leste Volume One

Held by the Ministry of EducationSponsored by UNICEF, UNESCO and CARE International

17-19 April 2008, Dili, Timor-Leste

UNICEF Timor-Leste/2006/Smithies

UNICEF Timor-Leste/2006/Berry

UNICEF Timor-Leste/2006/Berry

UNICEF Timor-Leste/2006/Rabemiafara

UNICEF Timor-Leste/2006/Asael

UNICEF Timor-Leste/2006/Rabemiafara

Glossary of Key Terms

Foreword

Executive Summary

1. Background and Conference Aims

2. Education and Language in Timor-Leste

3. Helping Children Learn: Multilingual Education3.1 Language and Its Relationship to Education3.2 How Children Learn Best3.3 Benefits of Multilingual Education

4. Teaching in Multilingual Settings: Implications for Teachers and Teacher Training4.1 What Do Teachers Need?4.2 Implications for Teacher Training and Support4.3 Designing Materials4.4 Challenges and Opportunities of Teaching in Mother Tongues

5. Implications for Language Policy Development

6. Best Practices and Lessons Learned: In-Depth Case Studies6.1 Cambodia: A Pilot-Study Approach6.2 Papua New Guinea: A National Approach6.3 Mozambique: Focus on Policy Issues

7. Key Lessons for Timor-Leste

8. Conclusions from the Conference: What Is Needed to Make Multilingual Education Work in Timor-LesteA. Research and Policy B. What Teachers NeedC. Language DevelopmentThe Next Steps

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Contents

Glossary of Key TermsBilingual Individual: Ability to speak/understand (and sometimes read/write) two languages; Society: Presence of at least

two language groups

Bilingual education Use of two languages for literacy and instruction

Fluency High degree of competence in speaking, reading and/or writing

Language as a subject Where a language is taught as a foreign language. It is a subject that students study, where they learn about the language

Language development Promoting oral and written use of a language, for example by expanding its vocabulary, agreeing on a written form, and creating books and school materials

Language for First Literacy

This is the language that a child or adult first learns to become literate in. Each person only learns to read once, and then transfers this skill to other languages. It is preferable if this skill is learnt in a person’s mother tongue

Language of instruction This is the language used to teach (guide and instruct) students in their subjects, either decreed by the government or used in classroom practice

Language of oral use in the classroom only

Where language is only spoken in the classroom to help students with their understanding, but is not written

Literacy Ability to read, write, calculate, and otherwise use a language in a variety of settings and relates to the ability to conceptualise in that language.

Mother tongue A child’s first language. This is the language they speak at home. Vernacular languages, local languages, and first language are also terms used to refer to the mother tongue.

Mother tongue-based multilingual education

Schooling beginning with the mother tongue (a child’s first language) for reading, writing and learning, while teaching the second language (usually the official/national language) as a foreign language and a subject of study, and beginning the transition to the second language(s) as language(s) of instruction by about Grade Three. (See also Transition model)

Multilingual Individual: Ability to speak/understand (and sometimes read/write) more than two languages; Society: Presence of more than two language groups

Multilingual education Use of more than two languages for literacy and instruction

Official/National language

The language(s) that a government or Constitution declares are the official/national languages of the country. These languages are used for government business and are often the languages of instruction

Orthography Standardised system for writing a language, including a script and rules for spelling and punctuation

Submersion model Use of a second/foreign language for all instruction, with little or no help for learners. All instruction is done in the official or national language from when children first enter school

Transition model Where children begin their education in their mother tongue and then learn the official/national languages and transition to instruction in the official/national language at around Grade 3. (See also Mother tongue-based multilingual education)

Glossary adapted from UNESCO’s Advocacy Kit for Promoting Multilingual Education: Including the Excluded, and UNESCO’s First Language First: Community-based Literacy Programmes For Minority Language Contexts in Asia. Information on how to obtain these reports is included in the further reading list in Volume Two of this report.

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The Constitution of Timor-Leste identifies Tetum and Portuguese as the official languages. Both English and Bahasa Indonesia are used as working languages and the Constitution also states that other national languages are also valued and developed by the State.

Given this multilingual landscape within Timor-Leste, school children, parents and teachers have varying experiences and exposure to these languages. It is important to highlight that majority of Timorese are bilingual and there is an increasing number of multilingual Timorese. Being aware of the challenges we are facing in languages and education for children, we have embarked on setting up policies which will establish solid foundations for education in Timor-Leste.

The Ministry of Education together with development partners, organized the first Timor-Leste international conference on bilingual education between 17-19 April 2008. The conference aimed to provide information to educators and education policymakers on experiences of other countries and apply this learning in designing and implementing languages policy and teaching methodology that best serves the needs of children in Timor-Leste.

Participants in the conference, including Ministry of Education officials, UNTL representatives, teachers, researchers and development partners were very interested in the speaker presentations and keen to discuss language issues in order to find good practices that will best serve the needs of children in Timor-Leste.

As most people are aware, the issue of language is a sensitive one in Timor-Leste at this time. The working group discussions in this conference brought heated and passionate debates and also provided opportunities for participants to have open discussions and exchange ideas.

Foreword

This publication ‘Helping Children Learn: an International Conference on Bilingual Education in Timor-Leste’, summarises the outcomes of this conference. Volume One covers the conference aim, education and language in Timor-Leste, models of multilingual education, teachers’ needs and implications for language policy development. It also features best practices and lessons learned from a variety of countries including Cambodia, Mozambique and Papua New Guinea. Volume Two provides conference materials including PowerPoint presentations presented by invited speakers, conference program, opening and closing speeches and a further reading list.

The Ministry of Education, at a time when we are aiming to increase and improve both human and material resources, will study with interest the outcomes and ideas expressed during this conference.

The Ministry of Education hopes that teachers, researchers, policy makers and development partners will find this publication useful to support a better future for all children in Timor-Leste.

Finally, I would like to thank all participants for their contribution to the conference. I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to UNICEF, UNESCO and CARE International for their support in ensuring that the conference was rewarding for all.

João Câncio Freitas, PhDMinister of EducationRDTL

Helping Children Learn: An International Conference on Bilingual Education in Timor-Leste

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This report documents the first international conference on Multilingual Education in Timor-Leste. This conference, “Helping Children Learn: An International Conference on Bilingual Education in Timor-Leste”, was held in Dili, Timor-Leste from 17-19 April 2008. The conference was held by the Ministry of Education and sponsored by UNICEF, UNESCO and CARE, and over 140 people attended. This conference was an opportunity for educators and education policy makers to learn from research and the experiences of other countries and apply this learning in designing and implementing language policy and teaching methodology that best serves the needs of children in Timor-Leste.

The report is organized into two volumes. Volume One describes the proceedings and highlights main

Executive Summary

recommendations. Volume Two contains the PowerPoints used in the different sessions and other details on the conference program.

This conference has been convened in the International Year of Language, and builds on previous work in Southeast Asia and Timor-Leste. There are over 16 local languages in Timor-Leste. The Constitution of Timor-Leste states that there are two official languages – Tetum and Portuguese – and other Timorese languages are to be valued and developed. Only 40% of children know Tetum or Portuguese (the languages of instruction) when they enter school,1 and language is one of the main barriers to education, leading to low enrolments, high dropout and repetition rates, and poor learning achievement in school.

1 Source: Education Management Information System (EMIS), as presented by Mr. Cidálio Leite, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Education, in his presentation at the conference.

UNICEF Timor-Leste/2008

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Five decades of research show that mother tongue-based multilingual education can improve children’s ability to become fluent in the official languages of a country when those languages are not the mother tongues of many citizens. This model of multilingual education involves schooling beginning with the mother tongue (a child’s first language) for reading, writing and learning, while teaching the second language (usually the official/national language) as a foreign language and a subject of study, and beginning the transition to the second language(s) as language(s) of instruction by about Grade 3. Using this approach to multilingual education can ensure that children achieve good developmental outcomes as well as achieve fluency in both official languages of Timor-Leste. This model has been implemented around the world, and some of the key lessons for Timor-Leste centre on the importance of teacher training and the development of orthographies and resources in local languages.

The main conclusions of the conference are that if Timor-Leste is to adopt a mother tongue-based multilingual education approach, changes are needed in three areas:

A. Research and Policy

Different types of policy support and change include:

Need to develop a comprehensive policy for bilingual education, with the Ministry of Education National Directorate of Curricula, Materials and Evaluation supporting the further development of bilingual (or multilingual) education

Financial and human resources need to be allocated to develop multilingual education

Need to do research:

- into where different languages are being used in Timor-Leste to be able to adequately plan a mother tongue-based multilingual education program,

- on levels of proficiency in different languages

to assess the need for a mother tongue-based multilingual education program, and

- on the impact of language on education, particularly exploring children out of school (not enrolled) to see if language influences their access in the Timor-Leste context.

Develop fluency in the official languages for both teachers and students.

Need to ensure commitment of government officials is important to promote the importance of multilingual education.

B. What Teachers Need:

Proficiency and fluency in the official languages and mother tongues

Skills and knowledge about teaching a second language, and manuals for doing this

Teacher training and support for teachers. The role of teachers is crucial in teaching children to learn; therefore teachers need to be supported and trained systematically and continuously on how to enhance their proficiency in the official languages and the use of mother tongue.

Textbooks, teaching materials and teaching guides to be translated from the official/national languages into a range of Timorese mother tongues and make these more culturally relevant.

Clear advice and policy directions authorising them to teach in local languages. Having multiple mother tongues in a classroom is the exception not the norm – teachers need to have the authority to choose (either alone or in conjunction with parents and the community) the language of instruction. It was suggested that the government give authority through a circular to authorise teachers to teach in the local languages


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An awareness campaign to convince teachers of kindergarten and Grade 1 and Grade 2 of the importance of using local languages

Supportive parents and communities: communities and parents need to be convinced of the importance of their children learning in their mother tongues, as a step towards learning the official languages

Good resource materials for teaching in a multilingual or bilingual education system created in Timor-Leste’s many mother tongues. Based on the experiences of other countries, it is possible to develop materials for all languages and regions:

- Government can train teachers to create their own teaching learning materials

- Communities can support teachers to develop their own teaching learning materials

- Communities can be involved in developing resources – by providing stories, parents and community members can create a lot of content in the language in which the children will be taught

Appropriate recruitment and deployment; preferably recruit parent-teachers or teachers from the local area to ensure they are proficient in the mother tongue(s) in that area, or otherwise train teachers from outside the area in the mother tongues.

C. Language Development:

Develop standardised orthographies for Timorese local languages. These orthographies need to be disseminated and socialised.

Further develop and disseminate the Tetum orthography. This is to be done by the National Institute of Linguistics with support from the government.

Develop local languages through:

- Inviting people to write stories in their own

dialects and use pictures

- Investigating the creation of a repository/centre where people from all over Timor-Leste could come and write and record stories and songs etc. in their mother tongues and other languages (one speaker shared the experience of the Borneo Literature Bureau, which used this approach. Its role was to find and publish written materials in local languages)

Use the media to promote official languages and other local languages.

Ensure that the National Institute of Linguistics (INL) has sufficient resources and capacity.

The next steps to be taken are:

The Working Group that was established for this conference to continue to meet to focus on the conclusions of the conference (presented above) and move them forward.

A Ministry of Education delegation should attend the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation (SEAMEO) conferences in July 2008.

Consider sending a delegation from Timor-Leste to Cambodia, as the Under-Secretary of State Mr. Chey Chap indicated at the conference that he is very happy to receive a group from Timor-Leste to exchange and learn from experiences.

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This report documents the first international conference on Multilingual Education in Timor-Leste, “Helping Children Learn: An International Conference on Bilingual Education in Timor-Leste”, which was held in April 2008. There are two official languages mandated in the Constitution of Timor-Leste: Tetum and Portuguese (Article 13.1). Research shows that mother tongue-based multilingual education can improve children’s ability to become fluent in the official/national languages of a country, when those languages are not the mother tongues of many citizens. This model of multilingual education involves schooling beginning with the mother tongue (a child’s

From left to right: Mr. Teodosio Ximenes (Operation Manager, CARE), Mr. Jun Kukita (Representative, UNICEF Timor-Leste), Dr. João Câncio Freitas (Minister, Ministry of Education), and Dr. Sheldon Shaeffer (Director, UNESCO Bangkok)

Background and Conference Aims

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first language) for reading, writing and learning, while teaching the second language (usually the official/national language) as a foreign language and a subject of study, and beginning the transition to the second language(s) as language(s) of instruction by about Grade 3.

The aim of the conference was to provide information so that educators and education policy makers can learn from the experiences of other countries and apply this learning in designing and implementing language policy and teaching methodologies that best serve the needs of children in Timor-Leste, ensuring that they achieve good developmental outcomes as well as

UNICEF Timor-Leste/2008/Vas


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achieve fluency in both official languages of Timor-Leste. This conference was an opportunity to further develop a body of knowledge within Timor-Leste by being able to learn from the experiences with multilingual education and the use of mother tongues in education in other countries and regions of the world.

In October 2007, initial meetings were held by the Ministry of Education to discuss the key themes of this conference. A working group was formed by the Ministry of Education with UNESCO, UNICEF, the University of Timor-Leste, and CARE International. This working group’s initial focus has been to consider the issues of multilingual education, and it also took on the role of preparing the conference in Timor-Leste. As 2008 is the International Year of Languages (UNESCO), with a particular focus on mother tongues, it is a fitting time for Timor-Leste to become more involved in global debates about language in education policies.

South-east Asian countries have opened the discussion on mother tongue-based multilingual education, with the South-East Asian Ministers of Education Organisation (SEAMEO) conference held in Bangkok in February 2008 focusing on this issue. A delegation from Timor-Leste attended this conference. The recommendations from this delegation to the Timorese government/Minister of Education were:

Research the viability of using Timorese mother tongues, such as Mambai, Baikenu and Fataluku, to verify if it is possible to use as the language of instruction

Develop and promote Tetum and Portuguese

Use Tetum as language of instruction in pre-school and Grade 1- 3 in primary school

Use Tetum in upper grades when teaching human rights, civic education, religion and physical education health/hygiene

Continue to use Tetum as an auxiliary language of

instruction (oral) for the other grades and subjects in which Portuguese is the language of instruction

Develop a curriculum and didactic materials in Tetum for the grades and subjects that will be taught using this language

Having the Timorese delegation attend the SEAMEO conference increased the urgency and awareness of the need to have a conference exploring mother tongue-based multilingual education within Timor-Leste. Following the SEAMEO conference, the working group mentioned earlier then began focusing on preparing the Timorese conference.

This conference, “Helping Children Learn: An International Conference on Bilingual Education in Timor-Leste”, was held in Dili, Timor-Leste from 17-19 April 2008. The conference was organized by the Ministry of Education and was sponsored by UNICEF, UNESCO and CARE. In total 140 people attended Day One of the conference, 114 on Day Two, and 93 on Day Three. Most participants were Timorese and some international staff also attended. Many participants came from within the Ministry of Education. Other participants came from international and Timorese organisations. Education administrators, teachers and teacher trainers attended the conference.

Nine presentations were made; in these, 13 speakers presented their research and work on language and education. Some have focussed on the experiences of Timor-Leste, and others brought their experiences working in the region or other parts of the world. The speakers were:

His Excellency Chey Chap, Under Secretary of State of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, Cambodia.

Dr. Benjamim de Araújo e Corte-Real, Chairman of the National Institute of Linguistics (INL) and Rector of the National University of Timor-Leste (UNTL).2

2 Note that the PowerPoint slides from each presentation are provided in Volume 2 of this report.

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Ms. Paula Gubbins, Senior Programme Officer, Global Education Center, Academy for Educational Development, in Washington.

Dr. Andrew Ikupu, Regional Capacity Building Advisor to the Department of Education, Papua New Guinea.

Dr. Donna Kay LeCzel, Senior Advisor on Education Policy Reform and Teacher Education, Global Education Center Academy for Educational Development, in Washington.

Mr. Cidálio Leite, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Education, Timor-Leste.

Professor Sozinho Francisco Matsinhe, Department African Languages, School of Arts, Education, Languages and Communication, College of Human Sciences, University of South Africa.

Mr. Cliff Meyers, Regional Education Adviser, UNICEF Bangkok.

Mr. Jan Noorlander, Provincial Coordinator Highland Community Education Program, CARE Cambodia.

Mr. Khath Samal, Program Manager Highland Community Education Program, CARE Cambodia.

Mr. Pa Satha, Deputy Director of the Ratanakiri Provincial Office of Education, Youth and Sport, Cambodia.

Dr. Sheldon Shaeffer, Director of UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education in Bangkok.

Dr. Kerry Taylor-Leech, Research Fellow in Applied Linguistics, Macquarie University.

Hearing these speakers gave policy makers, education administrators and teachers in Timor-Leste an opportunity to reflect on Timor-Leste’s linguistic landscape and perspectives and engage with research about the importance of mother tongue education in the early years. Participants also learned how other countries have approached implementing mother tongue-based multilingual education. The experiences of

Box 1.1 The Minister’s Questions for consideration

What should we consider the mother tongue in a given district, given the linguistic diversity?

Should teachers decide what the language of instruction should be in each classroom?

Are we giving stress to our children and complicating their lives by expecting so much from them?

Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Mozambique, Namibia, Bolivia, Guatemala, Kenya, the Philippines, China, Liberia and Egypt were shared. Presentations were made in the mornings and after each presentation there was a Question and Answer session. On Day One and Day Two working group discussions were held in the afternoon, allowing participants to discuss in more detail the presentations.

“It’s your responsibility to decide what to do in Timor-Leste. I can only share our experiences in Mozambique and you can take from them what you will.” (Sozinho Matsinhe)

The Minister of Education noted in his opening remarks that education in Timor-Leste is at a cross-roads, and that Timor-Leste is building a solid foundation to develop education for the future of Timor-Leste. The Minister introduced three questions that participants should consider as the conference progressed.

All material presented in this report came from conference discussions and resource people/speakers. In the Volume 2, detailed background information on the conference can be found, including the program, opening and closing remarks, PowerPoint slides for each of the presentations, speaker biographies, the participant list and a further reading list.


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Timor-Leste is a mosaic of languages, with over 16 languages spoken.3 Most Timorese are at least bilingual, and some are multilingual. There are two official languages mandated in the Constitution of Timor-Leste: Tetum and Portuguese (Article 13.1). The Constitution also notes that Tetum and other national languages are to be valued and their development should be promoted (Article 13.2). According to the 2004 census, approximately 36.8% of the population speaks, reads or writes Portuguese, and 85.6% speak, read or write Tetum.4 It is important to note that the majority of Tetum speakers speak Tetum as a second language.5

INL in Timor-Leste was established in July 2001. On 14 April 2004 there was a government decree that made the Tetum orthography of INL the official orthography, and the decree made INL the scientific guardian for the development of Tetum and other languages. The spelling developed at INL was declared the standard. INL has produced many publications, and been involved in many meetings and discussions.

Dr. Benjamim de Araújo e Corte-Real noted in his presentation that there are a lot of Portuguese words used by Timorese people when they speak Tetum, and many of these people are not aware that they know and use some Portuguese language. Dr. Corte-Real’s concern is that if Tetum and mother tongues are introduced to a greater degree into the education system then the introduction of Portuguese will be retarded and possibly

distance children from the Portuguese language.The language situation in Timor-Leste is very complex,

and bound up with issues of culture, history, politics and identity. Yet, countries that are examined in this report and that were discussed at the conference also have complex situations regarding languages and language choice. Many of them have successfully adopted multilingual education programs using mother tongues as the initial language of instruction and literacy, which has resulted in strong educational outcomes. It is important to remember that Timor-Leste is part of a global community struggling with issues of language and identity. Many countries are exploring ideas of mother tongue-based multilingual education, and there are rich experiences for Timor-Leste to draw from.

Language and Identity in Timor-Leste

Dr. Kerry Taylor-Leech, Research Fellow at Macquarie University, interviewed 78 people between the ages of 18 and 65 about their attitudes to language and language policy. She found that there were strong links between language and identity for all the participants in her research. Dr. Taylor-Leech presented her key findings from student focus groups. Analysis of the students’ talk showed that most participants saw Tetum as an expression of identity and national unity. A common

Education and Language in Timor-Leste

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3 Note that there is a range of estimates of the number of languages, depending on the source.4 See census National Priority Tables 5.3A and 5.3B. Census available at http://dne.mopf.gov.tl/census/tables/national/index.htm, accessed 13 May 2008. Note that

it is unclear how well people speak these languages – proficiency may range from a few words to fluency, as language competence was self-reported, and people were not asked about their level of proficiency.

5 According to the Census 2004, Tetum, Tetum Prasa and Tetum Terik are used as mother tongues by 58,270 (6%), 169,060(18%) , 57,449 (6%) people, respectively.

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view was that Portuguese would help to modernise and develop Tetum. The students said Portuguese was important because it would help the country to develop relationships with other countries, especially in Europe and the community of Portuguese-speaking countries (Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguêsa). The students also expressed strong loyalty to their local languages. They felt that people should be proud of their cultural heritage and their local identities. The students agreed that they would like to see Tetum more developed and that they wanted to see Tetum hold equal status to Portuguese. Others pointed out that they could not learn their local languages in schools. As one student said, “There is no school in Timor-Leste where I can learn Makasai.” Dr. Taylor-Leech suggested that the students’

views in her study could help inform the development of a more inclusive education policy which recognises the ethnolinguistic identities of all language speakers.

Language and Education: Policy History and Current Policy

The Education Policy 2004-2008 included the syllabus framework that states that the languages taught as subjects would be four hours per week of Tetum and four hours of Portuguese in Grade 1, transitioning to six hours of Portuguese and two hours of Tetum by Grade 6.6 In 2004, the original draft of the primary school curriculum statement used this model, which had students

Figure 1.1Local Languages Spoken in Timor-Leste

6 Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports (2004) Education Policy 2004-2008, Dili, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste.

Source: Lafaek Magazine, CARE International Timor-Leste


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transitioning from Tetum to Portuguese. However, when the policy was being finalised, the Minister decided that all instruction would be in Portuguese. In 2006, Tetum was defined as an auxiliary language that could be used to assist the teaching process. In addition, Tetum was accepted as the language of instruction in the first two years of schooling.

In April 2008, this auxiliary model has been replaced with a policy that makes both Tetum and Portuguese the languages of instruction. This new education policy has been approved by the Council of Ministers, and focuses on multilingual education. In terms of time that children spend learning in and about the two official languages, the policy stipulates:

Grade 1 Tetum 70% Portuguese 30%Grade 2 Tetum 50% Portuguese 50%Grade 3 Tetum 30% Portuguese 70%Grade 4 Tetum 0% Portuguese 100%7

Although the policy documents specify percentages, the policy intent is that these percentages provide a general idea about which language should be dominant in the classroom in particular grades. From Grade 4, Portuguese will be the main language of instruction and the only written language; Tetum will be used as an oral language of instruction only, except for the reading of Tetum as language. The recommendation from the East Timorese delegation to the SEAMEO conference that particular subjects be taught in Tetum throughout pre-secondary school has been reflected in the draft pre-secondary curriculum statement, but this is in the process of approval and has not been officially approved.

This new policy (April 2008) is an improvement on

the previous policy. However, it still does not support learning in the early years in a child’s mother tongue. Note that the mother tongue is the first language that children speak. Tetum is the mother tongue for a small proportion of Timorese.

Educational Performance, Teacher Training and Materials: The Situation in Timor-Leste

Is there a relationship between the following?

Only 40% of children know Tetum or Portuguese (the languages of instruction) when they enter school8

Only 46% of children finish primary school

22% of Timorese children repeat Grade 1

13-19% of children repeat Grade 2

80% of Grade 3 children assessed in 2006 did not achieve minimum levels of learning in Mathematics, Tetum and Portuguese languages.9

Language along with poverty, long distances to school, inadequate number of classrooms, lack of materials, and lack of qualified teachers form barriers to children receiving a quality education in Timor-Leste. Looking at international research, language has been identified globally as one of the main reasons for very high repetition and poor retention and performance rates such as those found in Timor-Leste.

When colonised, under the Portuguese system few Timorese children were able to access education. Teaching was done in Portuguese, and teachers either

7 Presented to the conference by Mr. Cidálio Leite, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Education, in his presentation.8 Note that this percentage is for children as they begin school (i.e. aged around four to seven), and compares with the much higher numbers of proficiency for the

whole population in Tetum (85.6%) and Portuguese (36.8%) mentioned earlier. The difference in these figures further confirms that most East Timorese speak Tetum and Portuguese as second or third languages.

9 Source: Education Management Information System (EMIS), and the National Measuring Learning Achievement Study (2006), as presented by Mr. Cidálio Leite, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Education, in his presentation at the conference.

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came from Portugal or were sent to Portugal for teacher training. This is not an option today with a much greater number of schools and an independent curriculum. In the Indonesian period, education was greatly expanded so many more children were able to access education. Teaching was in Indonesian language; most teachers were Indonesian and the level of teacher training was poor in general. When the Indonesians left in 1999 the education system was left in ruins. About 80% of teachers left the country returning to Indonesia and many school and administration buildings were destroyed.10 Timor-Leste today has the challenge of providing a quality education to a large and increasing number of children.

As the majority of active and qualified teachers in Timor-Leste were educated during the Indonesian occupation and in the Indonesian language, teaching in Tetum and Portuguese remains challenging, despite teacher training programs (particularly in Portuguese). Eight years on from independence, Timor-Leste is lacking

10 Susan Nicolai (2004) Learning Independence: Education in emergency and transition in Timor-Leste since 1999, International Institute for Educational Planning, UNESCO, Paris; see chapter two.

teachers fluent in Portuguese capable of teaching in and about Portuguese. Tetum resources are still being developed, and Indonesian proficiency has decreased. Teachers in Timor-Leste have not yet received specific training in how to teach a child a language not spoken in their home. Although most instruction is to be completed in Portuguese with some Tetum, in practice, teachers use a variety of languages in the classroom to help children learn.

Materials exist in the official languages. The Ministry of Education with development partners such as UNICEF and CARE has been producing teaching and learning materials in both Tetum and Portuguese as well as bilingual guides and teacher training manuals. INL has been working hard to develop Tetum, including producing a standardised orthography. Materials have also been produced in Tetum by the Mary McKillop Sisters and Timor Aid. Few if any materials are available in other languages from Timor-Leste, but INL and NGOs have started to develop dictionaries in other languages.

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3.1 Language and Its Relationship to Education

“Any tool has multiple uses. Language… can be either a bridge or a barrier.” (Shane Tourtellotte 2006).11

One third of the world’s languages are in Asia (approximately 2200 out of 6000). Ninety-six per cent of the world’s languages are spoken by only 4% of the world’s population. Languages are repositories for culture, and very important to cultural sustainability. Many languages are dying, and it is possible that by the end of the century only 600 languages (10%) will be left. When languages are lost, we lose diversity and human knowledge. Part of national identity is language, and cultural identity and cultural diversity are important. If languages and cultures are protected we can ensure our linguistic and cultural diversity and sustainability. Education should represent the cultural diversity of a country, which includes the linguistic diversity.12

Languages often die because of attitudes in the educational system, particularly when languages are not chosen as languages of instruction. Indonesia alone has 748 languages. The Javanese language is very rich in culture. However, if Javanese continues not to be used as a language of instruction in schools, it will be lost. Languages do not die out overnight. There are early warning signs, including that a language is not included

Helping Children Learn: Multilingual Education

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in the education system, so that children are unable to learn in or about their own languages at school.

Language is important to education, as it is the tool that teachers use to communicate with their students. There are three main ways that language is used in education, all of them important. These are as a:

1. Language of instruction (LoI)

2. Language as a subject of study (i.e. either learning a foreign language, or studying a language more in-depth), and

3. Language of literacy (i.e. the language that a person uses to learn to read and write).

All three uses of language are important, but how and when particular languages are used in each of the three ways has implications for how children will learn. There is global empirical evidence which shows that it takes on average five to six years for people to conceptualise (think) in second languages. This affects both students and teachers and has implications for second (and third) language introduction and teaching.

3.2 How children learn best

“We should think about the children. They are the

11 Shane Tourtellotte in “String of Pearls”, a science fiction story from Analog, 7/8, 2006. This quote and related comments were shared by several speakers at the conference.

12 Dr. Sheldon Shaeffer, Resident Regional Representative for UNESCO, based in Bangkok, presented in his speech at the conference.

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priority, and helping them learn best is what we should be doing.” (Conference participant, comment during plenary question and answer session)

In multilingual settings, there are two common approaches to teach the official/national language (s):

The submersion model, where all instruction is done in the official/national language(s) from when children first enter school.

The transitional model, where children begin their education in their mother tongue and then learn the official/national language(s) and transition into having their instruction in the official/national language at around Grade 3.

This second model is known as mother tongue-based multilingual education. Five decades of research on mother-tongue based multilingual education (the transitional model) has empirically proven many times and in many countries that early education and literacy should be provided in a child’s first language – their mother tongue – if they are to achieve the best educational outcomes and greater proficiency in the

Box 3.1 What is Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education?

education that promotes initial instruction and literacy in mother-tongue and improves educational quality by building upon the knowledge and experience of learners and teachers

education that allows often excluded linguistic groups into mainstream life without forcing them to leave behind their ethnic and linguistic identity

education that enables excluded linguistic learners to gain fluency and confidence in speaking, reading and writing the national language (and then international languages) and to participate fully in, and contribute, to national economic and social development

official/national languages.Children learn to read only once and to do this

in their mother tongue helps them to learn this skill properly. Research shows that children learn better in their first language for at least the first three years of formal education. Once acquired, the skills learned in the first language can be transferred to other languages. Having strong literacy and basic education in the mother tongue helps children to build a solid foundation and this helps them to build a bridge from home to school life (see Figure 3.1). For a successful learning outcome, starting teaching from the known and then moving to the unknown is very important.

There are three aspects of learning in a second or third language: content learning, new language learning and literacy learning. It is easier for children to learn if these three aspects are developed separately. Children perform better if they do not have to try and learn new words and language at the same time as trying to learn new curriculum content. In the Lubuagan Kalinga first language program in the Philippines, all new content in the first years of schooling is taught in the mother tongue. One participant in a working group discussion suggested that in light of this research, the approach to introducing the official languages in Timor-Leste needs to be reviewed.


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Figure 3.1. Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education: A Bridge from Home to School

Upper Bridge: Learners whose mother tongue is the language of instruction and literacy in education: they can cross the river easily, bridging the gap between home and school.

Lower Bridge: Learners who do not speak the standard school language used when they enter school struggle to make the transition from home to school.

A solid foundation in a child’s first language enables a strong bridge to be built from home to school

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Box 3.2 An “Ideal” Model of Multilingual Education

Multilingual education models that build a bridge from a child’s mother tongue to the official/national language(s) can take many forms. The “ideal” model is shown below in Figure 3.2 builds on decades of global research. It comes from UNESCO’s 2007 publication “Promoting Literacy in Multilingual Settings” and was presented at the conference by Mr. Cliff Meyers, Regional Education Advisor to UNICEF. It is called an ideal as it builds on research and best practice models of implementation to provide an optimum model for children to learn one official/national language. However, it needs to be adapted to Timor-Leste’s context for implementation here, particularly as there are two official/national languages that students need to learn, rather than just one.

The use of each language relates to all subjects. For example in both years of kindergarten (KG1 and KG2) and in Grade 1 (G1), the mother tongue is used as the language of instruction for all subjects – for example maths, science etc. – and the official/national language is taught as a second language. In the first two or three years of education only the mother tongue is written, although the official/national language is taught as a foreign language, but instruction in it is oral only. Literacy is taught in the mother tongue, and gradually the official/national language is introduced, first as a second language, and by Grade 4 it is also used as a language of instruction. By Grade 5, half of the subjects will be taught in the official/national language, and half in the mother tongue (e.g. science in the official/national language and mathematics in the mother tongue), and students will study both languages as a subject as well. After primary school, instruction can still be done in both languages, or a full transition can be made to all instruction being in the official/national language. In an ideal model of mother tongue-based multilingual education, children are fluent in the official/national language(s) at the end of primary school.

KG1 is the first year of kindergarten, G1 is Grade 1 and so on.L1 is the mother tongueL2 is the second language, usually an official/national languageL2SL is the second language (the official/national language) taught as a second language (i.e. as a foreign language, which differs slightly from if it was a subject of study)LoI is the language of instruction, i.e. the language that the teacher speaks in while teaching any subjectsSubject refers to the language being taught as a subject of studyLiteracy refers to the language that reading and writing is taught in, and the figure shows that reading and writing should be taught in the mother tongueThe blocks of each language relate to the amount of time spent on learning or on teaching in each language

Figure 3.2. An “Ideal” Model of Mother tongue-Based Multilingual Education

G6

Prim

ary L

evel

Pre-

prim

ary

Leve

l

L1 (LoI + subject) L2 (LoI + subject)

G4 L1 (LoI + subject) L2 (LoI + L2SL)

G2 L1 (LoI) L2SL(oral + written)

KG2 L1 (LoI, literacy) L2SL (oral)

G5 L1 (LoI + subject) L2 (LoI + subject)

G3 L1 (LoI) L2SL

G1 L1 (LoI, literacy) L2SL (oral)

KG1 L1 (LoI)


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3.3 Benefits of Multilingual Education

There are many benefits associated with mother tongue-based multilingual education:

Higher enrolment rates Lower drop out rates (a common reason for drop out in the early years of education is language; there are high drop-out rates for children speaking a different mother tongue to the language of instruction)

Lower repetition rates, for children needing to repeat particular grades of their schooling

Higher rates of success for girls staying in education Higher rates of parental and community participation in children’s education

It can improve the relationship between political leaders and a multilingual population

It leads to greater proficiency and fluency in official/national languages (and also then international languages if these are pursued) if initial instruction is done in mother tongue

Community involvement in education is very important – involving parents, community and teachers in education helps children learn. Greater involvement is found when initial instruction is in the mother tongue.

One of the reasons for promoting mother tongue-based multilingual education is to give all children an equal start, regardless of what language they learn at home.

“Children learn best by learning first in their mother tongues.” (Dr. Donna Kay LeCzel)

During a working group discussion a participant representing the Mary McKillop Sisters in Timor-Leste shared her experience working in Australian Aboriginal communities for 21 years. She and other sisters introduced a bilingual program, teaching Aboriginal children their first years of schooling in both their mother tongues and English. Children in Grade 3 in the bilingual program achieved approximately the same educational results as those who studied in English only. But by Grades 4, 5 and 6, some children taught in the bilingual program were up to two years ahead of their peers.

A bilingual education program in one part of China, children who received their initial education in the Dong language and transitioned to Chinese did better in all areas than their peers who studied in Chinese from the beginning of schooling:

“Miaolan primary school has researched the children and parents involved in the project. We

CARE International

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Box 3.3 Portuguese and Mother Tongues

Some concerns were expressed during the conference that introducing mother tongues was a means of removing Portuguese from Timor-Leste or retarding the introduction of Portuguese across Timor-Leste. Much of the debate was heated, strong and passionate.

The conference aim is not to remove Portuguese from Timor-Leste or to retard its introduction. Portuguese is one of two official languages (with Tetum) in Timor-Leste’s National Constitution. The Constitution is fully respected by the Ministry of Education and by the supporters of the conference.

If children learn first in their mother tongues and become literate first in their mother tongues, their educational outcomes in general will be far better than for those children who are educated in a language with which they are not familiar. It is vital to appreciate that in this approach they are likely to become much more proficient in Portuguese. This is because they will not be trying to learn new concepts at the same time as learning new language. They will be taught Portuguese as a second language, giving them the skills they need to learn Portuguese best. Children educated in their mother tongue first are also likely to stay in school longer, and therefore likely develop more advanced language skills than other children.

The goal is to create a bridge, not to replace official/national languages.

“We might have a beautiful constitution and beautiful policies, but if it’s not for the good of the children I don’t know… Mother tongues are for the good of the children, not to kill another language.” (Conference participant, Comment made in question and answer session on Day Three)

have found that those children who first studied Dong and then studied Mandarin Chinese are superior in every respect to those who never studied Dong. This applies not only to reading and writing Chinese pinyin, to simple mathematics and to verbal expression, but also to music, physical education and art. In every respect, those children who have not studied Dong are not as good as those who have. Those who have studied Dong are more independent and have more initiative with respect to study and to life in general” (Saima Township, Rongiang County, 20 March 2005, translated from Chinese by D. N. Geary; Quote from

conference presentation of Dr. Sheldon Shaeffer Director of UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education in Bangkok)

The empirical question has been resolved – around the world it has been proven in many cultures and contexts that becoming literate in the mother tongue is far better for educational outcomes than beginning schooling in a second language. It is what policy makers decide to do with this knowledge that is interesting. In the following section different approaches to using mother tongues in the region and around the world are outlined.


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Often policies about languages in education reflect an ideal situation, and often these policies do not reflect classroom reality. Teachers around the world are devising practical solutions to deal with the classroom reality in terms of language of instruction, and if necessary they are making their own materials.

“If we are going to develop our mother tongues in Timor-Leste, we need to develop the human resources, our teachers. Our teachers define how we can develop our mother tongue.” (Participant in Working Group Three, on Day Two).

Teaching in Multilingual Settings: Implications for Teachers and Teacher Training

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4.1 What do teachers need?

The relationship between teachers and students is vital to education. Teachers need to know language learning theories to understand how children acquire and learn languages. Children acquire languages at home, but learning is based on a solid acquisition. Teachers need to understand how children learn, for example, children need silent periods to absorb new information. Teachers need:

Knowledge

- Of language learning theories (acquisition and learning)

- Of children’s needs (“silent period”, rates of repetition, when and how to correct mistakes

- Of children’s mother tongue or first language

- Fluency in the official/national language(s) and language of instruction

- Direct instruction methods

Skills

- Ability to assess students’ level of language skill

- Ability to use a wide range of active learning techniques

- Ability to differentiate instructional strategies based upon different levels of language ability among the students

UNICEF Timor-Leste/2008/Arakawa

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- Ability to design and use locally available teaching materials

Attitudes

- Understanding and respect for local languages

- Sensitivity to cultural norms of their learners and their parents

- Respect for the needs of the current language policy

Materials and Training

- Teachers need good materials, either provided to them or they need the skills to be able to make appropriate materials

- Teachers need training to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes mentioned here

- Teachers need to be trained using mother tongues as a medium of instruction; knowing a mother tongue is not the same as being able to use it as a tool for teaching

4.2 Implications for Teacher Training and Support

In order to successfully teach a mother tongue-based multilingual education program, teachers’ skills need to be improved in three key areas:

Teaching foreign languages

Language proficiency in mother tongues and in official/national languages

Training in how to make their own teaching resources.13

In other places, recruiting appropriately skilled teachers and retaining them in a school has been challenging, especially if schools are in remote areas. In Timor-Leste, most teachers are locally hired and in remote areas the issue is that many of these locally hired teachers are insufficiently qualified. For a mother tongue-based multilingual education program, as long as appropriate teacher training can be provided, it is preferable to hire local teachers rather than posting teachers from another area. This is because it takes much longer for someone to become highly proficient in a language (the mother tongue(s) in the local area), compared with the much shorter time period in which people can develop teaching skills. In Cambodia and Papua New Guinea, intensive training and support as well as continuing monitoring and supervision is provided to teachers, including those in remote areas, who have a low level of education themselves. In the Cambodian model, supervision plays an important role; there are regular school visits and on-the-job support provided by qualified supervisors. (Refer to the case-studies in section six of this report for more information on the approaches taken to teacher training in these two countries).

Teachers need training in how to teach languages as foreign languages. Particular skills and methodologies are needed, and these must be developed through teacher training. Teachers also need their language skills to be improved so that they can become fluent in both their students’ mother tongues and the languages that they are transitioning to at school. Teachers need both pre-service and in-service training.

In Namibia, where the first three years of school are in a local language, English is taught as a foreign language. Grade 4 is a transition year, where English becomes the language of instruction, and from this point forward mother tongues become a subject that students can study, rather than a language of instruction. Teacher

13 This was presented and reiterated by various speakers and was also discussed in the working groups.


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training is all conducted in English, but mother tongues are taught as subjects to people training to be teachers. Teacher colleges are located in areas where the main mother tongue for that region is spoken.

In Bolivia, which has a bilingual education policy, there is extensive support for teachers. There is an active support network of 500 teacher-advisors from across the nation; they receive special training to provide support for in-service teachers. The advisors receive classes in local languages from amongst their peers. Once the advisors learn the languages, they have to learn how to teach them. They are required to design learning modules in the local languages.

4.3 Designing Materials

It is important that materials are available in the local languages for a mother tongue-based multilingual education program to work effectively. Teachers and communities around the world design their own materials in their mother tongues.

In Namibia, story books have been published in the official/national language (English) and the four mother tongues, and some were produced bilingually. Books were written by student-teachers and teachers in week-long workshops, illustrated by students of the national art school, translated by the National Language Institute, and published in country. This resulted in high-quality materials produced in local languages.

Materials produced by teachers empower teachers to direct the classroom program. In Guatemala, teachers have turned to Mayan content, which is empowering for both teachers and students. In Guatemala even more powerful than teacher-produced materials are student-produced materials. In one program, students created story books and a calendar. Books were published by Guatemalan publishers and sold.

In Egypt, materials in the mother tongue – big books

for teachers to read to students and small books for students – were produced by Egyptian publishers and bought by USAID for a program they were supporting. The aim was not only to create quality learning materials in the mother tongue, but also to stimulate publishing for children’s books by Egyptian publishers.

In Papua New Guinea there are standardised materials – master or shell books – which teachers then translate into their students’ mother tongue(s) for use in the classroom. These are books where the main story structure is provided by the central ministry of education so that the books can achieve their learning aims. The shell book is effectively a template and the story can be translated by the teacher into the local languages, and the details of the story can be adapted to include local cultural references. As well as materials produced centrally that can be adapted to the local culture and context of the students, other materials are designed locally by the teachers to use in their own classrooms. (More information is presented in the case study in section six of this report).

In some places, particularly in remote rural areas, there are small – filial - schools with multi-grade classrooms. Recruiting teachers and developing materials for these classrooms can be challenging. In Guatemala, the official ages for children in primary school are seven to 13; however, some older and younger children also attend so in practice the age range is four to 15. Different methodologies are needed for different ages and grades to make it possible to teach this age range. In Guatemala, self-learning materials (self-learning guides) were created for use with students to address this issue of multi-age and multi-grade classrooms.

In Timor-Leste, the Lafaek magazines are excellent bilingual materials in Tetun and Portuguese, with Timorese content. The May McKillop Sisters and Timor Aid are also producing high quality materials in Tetun. However, similar materials also need to be produced in Timor’s other languages.

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4.4 Challenges and Opportunities of Teaching in Mother Tongues

There are challenges to teaching in mother tongues, significant implications for teacher training, and important

Box 4.1 Teaching and Mother Tongues in Timor-Leste

How do teachers in Timor-Leste use mother tongues in classrooms? As a language of instruction, translating the contents into mother tongue Using local resources Facilitating the child’s learning by using mother tongues Conserving local languages through classroom activities by using mother tongues

What teachers in Timor-Leste say they need Mother tongues are needed by children in grades one to three for their learning process Need to develop teaching materials in children’s mother tongues Need to provide adequate training and develop manuals for teachers NGOs, partners and the government need to provide support for developing manuals in mother tongues INL needs to develop orthographies for all Timorese languages, to standardise the orthographies for these languages

Develop local resources such as: short histories, poems, songs etc. that can then become teaching materials Teacher training on developing didactic (teaching) materials in mother tongues Need to develop a communication system to facilitate communication between teachers and students in the classroom

How can teachers in Timor-Leste teach using the mother tongue? Use lots of materials Use local resources – there is no need to import lots of resources Develop local history as teaching materials

Source: Working Group Discussions on Day Two of the conference.

positive outcomes that can be achieved by a mother tongue-based multilingual approach to education and literacy.


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Language is a contentious issue around the world. There is a widespread belief that local languages are not developed enough to be suitable for schooling or capable of expressing scientific or abstract concepts but if local languages are not used in new domains they cannot be modernised. All languages are rich and capable of expressing complex ideas.

There are concerns about teaching many languages in schools around the country, especially when teachers and students are already struggling to use the official languages. This is a problem experienced in Timor-Leste and elsewhere. However, if students first learn in their mother tongue before transitioning to the official/

Challenge Solution/opportunityLack of orthographies For oral languages, new alphabets can be developed relatively easily, using existing

methodologies and working with native speakers to develop alphabets, preferably using the same letters as the official/national language. International research shows that only a very small number of words are needed to start children reading and writing, and therefore only a basic orthography that can be put together quickly can allow education to begin in mother tongues very quickly

Lack of highly developed vocabulary in many languages

Languages can be developed by making new vocabulary by constructing composite words, and by borrowing words from other languages. Complex ideas can be explained in languages without scientific vocabularies. It is a colonial myth that unwritten local languages are incapable of expressing complex concepts. One speaker at the conference explained how the President of Senegal translated Einstein’s Theory of Relativity into the local language Wolof in the 1960s

Cost of producing materials in the mother tongues/need for didactic resources in mother tongues

Communities and teachers can work together to produce appropriate materials

Parents can be concerned that learning in the mother tongue will mean that their children remain marginalised

The Ministry of Education and/or other groups can explain to parents how proficiency in a child’s mother tongue can lead to better fluency in official/national languages and languages of commerce

Choosing which will be the language of instruction

In Papua New Guinea the government has given this choice to communities, especially as at times multiple languages are spoken in one community; or different classrooms could have different languages

Fear of disunity if citizens begin their education in different languages

Using multiple languages can actually provide greater unity (“Unity in our Diversity” is the motto that summarises Papua New Guinea’s language policy). People who are often marginalised because of their language and lack of competence in official/national languages can be included in the activities of the nation and their competency in official/national languages can be increased

national languages, they will be better at speaking the official languages and have a much better education and learning outcomes. To begin a mother-tongue based multilingual education program, only a small number of words is needed. The orthography can develop alongside the teaching in the language. Concerns were raised at the conference about the cost of teaching in over 16 languages around Timor-Leste, particularly in terms of producing materials. The experiences from other countries show that this can be done easily and cheaply, with local teachers creating their own materials, or adapting and translating their materials from centrally produced master or shell books.

Box 4.2 Common Challenges Faced in Teaching in Mother Tongue and Viable Solutions / Opportunities

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Policy is the means by which government translates its political vision into programs to deliver outcomes. A policy in itself is not a law. Language education policy can either support or ignore multilingualism and multi-literacy. Language reflects the social, cultural, political, and sometimes the economic environment. There are five levels of policy (listed from highest to lowest):

1. Major policy statements from the Constitution2. Recommendations from comprehensive strategies

Implications for Language Policy Development

5

3. Programs or legislation for specific problems4. Review of programs or legislation for specific problems5. Directives, administrative circulars, letters to all

school principals etc.14

There is a great deal that countries can do to support multilingual education, and many of these changes require only low level policy change, especially given that the Constitution of Timor-Leste states that all languages are to be valued and developed.

Box 5.1 Policy Makes a Difference: Case Study of Approaches to Multilingual Education

Bolivia – Where the Language Policy is Successful. There are 35 Amerindian languages spoken, and four official languages, all of which are written (three are local languages and the fourth is Spanish). In the Bolivian education reform the four languages are used as languages of instruction and taught as foreign languages. Learning modules have been created, with each of the four languages used both as languages of instruction and as foreign languages. Children’s learning outcomes have been dramatically improved with this new approach.

Kenya – Where the Language Policy is a Problem. Although there are more than 40 languages, most of these languages are not officially recognised; English is the official language and Kiswahili is the national language. English is the language of instruction in schools, but children in poor schools or where English is not used at home do not have models of standard English. Many children fail exams which are set in standard English. Most children do not continue their education past Grade 8.

Liberia – Where No Language Policy is a Problem. Although there is no official language policy with regard to education, Liberian English is the de-facto language of instruction. Many teachers have weak English skills and this affects their ability to teach students effectively. Learning outcomes are poor.

14 This draws on a summary of global best practices, as presented at the conference by Mr. Cliff Meyers, UNICEF’s Regional Education Advisor.


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Due to political constraints and multiple pressures on government, often the technical ideal needs to be adjusted to fit with the political reality. The ideal technical model enables children to transition throughout their primary school education from their mother tongue to the official/national language. This is a long bridge from home to school, using the metaphor illustrated earlier in this report. Papua New Guinea has implemented this technical “ideal”. However, many governments and agencies implementing mother tongue-based multilingual education programs have used shorter bridges because of political pressures. For example, in Cambodia the national government enabled the provincial education department and CARE International to implement a three-year transition program bridging students from their mother tongue to the official/national language.

There are many experiences from various countries around the world with different policy models available for Timor-Leste to learn from. In Guatemala, Spanish is the official language but the Constitution stipulates that the government will respect Mayan languages, dialects and culture. There is a commitment that people who speak indigenous languages will be provided with a bilingual education where there is a majority of

indigenous language speakers. There are 20 languages, with four predominant ones. Mayan groups make up almost half of the population, but only a minority have access to a bilingual education.

In China, a mother tongue-based multilingual program has been implemented with the Dong people. In the first four semesters of study, Dong is used as the language of instruction for reading and writing, arithmetic, community life, and culture. In the second year of kindergarten, oral Chinese is introduced, followed by written Chinese in Grade 1. In Grades 2 to 6, Chinese and Dong are used for teaching, with increased use of Chinese. In Grade 5, English is introduced. By the end of primary school, students are proficient in Dong and Chinese and have also started learning English.

Some of Timor-Leste’s regional neighbours have implemented mother-tongue based multilingual education policies. Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam have implemented (either universally or in specific regions) mother tongue as a language of instruction at pre-primary and grades one to three, and the official/national language is taught as a foreign language during the early grades of schooling. For Grade 3 and above, the language of instruction is the official language. Mother tongues are also used in Non-Formal Education in these countries.


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Box 5.2 Some Questions to Consider in Timor-Leste

What are the cultural, social, and economic implications of the current policy?

How will those implications/constraints/supporting elements be brought to bear on policy implementation?

Are there lessons to be learned/applied from the language policies of similar developing education systems?

What literature is presently available in the proposed language(s)?

Can that literature be brought into the instructional program?

What is the present capacity of the teaching force vis-à-vis the new policy?

What plans are in place to match the language capacity of the teachers with the needs of policy implementation (both in pre-service and ongoing professional development)?

How will curriculum and teaching materials be developed to support the new policy?

What about publication, distribution, and professional development in the use of the new materials?

What are the plans related to assessment/evaluation of the policy and implementation strategies?

What local government and international donor resources will be needed to support policy implementation?

Language in education policies can change, and new models are experimented with, as will be seen in the in-depth case studies in the following section of this report.


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6.1 Cambodia: A Pilot-Study Approach

The Highland Community Education Program

Background

The Under-Secretary of State for Education His Excellency Mr. Chey Chap noted that there are some similarities between the situation in Timor-Leste now and Cambodia after 1979. After the Khmer Rouge period, there were very few teachers left in the country, many of the school buildings were used for other purposes or destroyed/damaged. Over 90% of all teachers were murdered, so after the war ended Cambodia began with almost nothing – no buildings and very few qualified teachers.

In 1999, the Cambodian government signed the Education for All (EFA) agreement in Dakar Senegal, agreeing to reach certain educational targets by 2015. This has provided both an impetus and a framework for Cambodia’s involvement in bilingual education, as bilingual education is one strategy to achieve the EFA goals.

There are 24 languages in Cambodia. The government announced that the Khmer language would be the official/national language and until recently it is the only language that has been used in education. Some of the ethnic minority peoples in the highlands speak a little of the official/national language, but many do not know it at all. The Cambodian government wanted the highland people to speak the official/

Best Practices and Lessons Learned: In-depth Case Studies

6

national language, partly to enable the government to have a relationship with the people in these areas and also to improve their education and quality of life through access to information and government services. Challenges in the highland communities were a lack of infrastructure and a low level of education in these areas. It is difficult to send teachers to remote areas because of the poor living conditions of the teachers. Those who started the Highland Community Education Program felt that a lot of children drop out in Grade 1 because of the language barrier, as they were not learning in their mother tongue.

What they did

Since 1998, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) has been developing Non-Formal Education programs using a bilingual education model. Since 2002 CARE International has worked with the government to develop a bilingual program for formal education. Thus the Highland Community Education Program was born. The program began as a pilot, initially starting with two of the main indigenous languages. The Cambodian government plans that teaching will be done in all of the languages, but the program began with two so that a good system could be established in the schools that participated in the pilot project, including those schools that were created as part of the pilot project. Once the program is working well with these two languages, more languages will be included in the program. Initial

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results were positive: “we learnt that if we only use the Khmer language (the official/national language) with indigenous children, their progress of learning is very slow” (Mr. Chey Chap).

The bilingual model is described in Figure 6.1. The percentages relate to time in the curriculum taught in each language.

Figure 6.1. The Bilingual Model Used in Cambodia

Language:Year:

Mother Tongue

Official/National Language

Year 1 80% 20%Year 2 60% 40%Year 3 30% 70%Year 4 0% 100%

As the highland languages previously were not written languages, the Khmer script was used to develop an orthography for other Cambodian languages. Schools were initially opened in six remote communities, and more schools have since opened. Every school has a school board, managing all the activities in their schools. These boards play a role in selecting community teachers. The government is selecting people from highland areas to become teachers there, as teachers from other places are unwilling to stay. Expecting people with low education to become teachers has its own challenges. People who can read and write are selected, and they all receive training from government and NGO partners. This teaching is delivered in their local area. They receive pre-service and in-service training, including learning to create their own teaching materials. Much of the national curriculum is irrelevant in the highlands, so the community suggests topics that they would like their children to study and the national curriculum is adapted to children’s daily realities. Materials have been developed that relate to the lives

of the highland people, because otherwise children are learning things that are different to the environment that they know. All pedagogical materials are approved by a board that consists of The Royal Academy of Cambodia and the MoEYS before they are used in the classroom. The materials reflect respect for Cambodian laws, policies and by-laws. The school schedule is changed to adopt to the local reality, namely agricultural seasonal work and household chores.

The government worked closely with national and international organisations. They cooperated with CARE International, UNESCO and UNICEF. The government is developing a policy and guidelines and NGOs are implementing activities and programs in line with government policies and guidelines. The program has been going for six years and is still a work in progress. The Ministry is slowly working towards a policy.

Key outcomes

After three years of the bilingual education program, children are learning faster in Grade 4 once they have transitioned to Khmer as the language of instruction, which was partly facilitated because the scripts are the same. The results are high promotion rates, low drop out rates, 90% of children are now enrolled, communities are highly committed to education and feel a part of schools and activities, and communities take ownership of schools. The benefits of the program are that people in highland communities now have access to learning the official/national language and through improved education have opportunities to increase levels of family income. Now the MoEYS is replicating the model in three Provinces in north-east Cambodia in four indigenous languages. Bilingual education is now being used in both formal and Non-Formal Education. The Non- Formal program reaches more languages.

Lessons learned

1. Special support is needed to keep teachers in remote and rural areas. The Cambodian government now


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has a special policy and supports teachers in isolated areas, providing additional support.

2. Recruiting teachers from local communities ensures that teachers know the mother tongue and will be committed and able to stay living in the area for a long time.

3. Implementation can be challenging. His Excellency Mr. Chey Chap, Under-Secretary of State, MoEYS said that “Talking is not the same as working. The working is more difficult than the talking”.

4. Beginning with a pilot study can be a good approach to developing a model that works well in practice.

6.2 Papua New Guinea: A National Approach

Background

Papua New Guinea is the most multilingual nation on earth with over 860 mother tongues. Currently 350 out of more than 860 languages in Papua New Guinea have written orthographies. There are three languages that are used by many citizens to communicate between those from different languages: Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu and English. In 1975 when Papua New Guinea became independent, it inherited an English-only policy in schools. Ten years after independence, the government realised that 85% of the population is rural and does not need English for their daily living. In 1986, the question became “education for what?” Many children were leaving school after three or four years and they were barely literate, disillusioned and misplaced by an old policy that only used English in education. Communities throughout Papua New Guinea are experiencing major challenges in dealing with social out-of-school misfits. This trend is increasing each year as more and more young men and women leave the education system.

What they did

A new policy was written in the 1990s after a major

review of the colonial constructed education system. Papua New Guinea has since been implementing a bilingual education program using mother tongues across the nation. The language policy is driven by literacy, numeracy and an identity agenda, as well as adhering to internationally set global targets such as the EFA goals. In Papua New Guinea, all languages are supported and developed. The language in education policy was re-defined to be about competencies in five areas: speech, writing, reading, listening and feeling. English, the colonial language, was adopted as one of the three official/national languages with its role as the language of instruction and learning at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels.

The new model mainly for the three-year pre-primary program was a mother tongue-based multilingual education approach. Education is 100% in the mother tongue for the first three years, and in most cases the language that children speak at home facilitates the learning process much better than the complexities of a foreign language. English is increasingly taught each year as children progress through their education. English is used both as a subject of study and a language of instruction. In Grade 3, five per cent of the school year is English, and 95% is taught in the mother tongue. The transition to English language takes six years. In Grade 7 50% is English, and in Grade 8, students are instructed 100% in English and have national examinations in English. Primary school finishes at the end of Grade 8. After Grade 8, students are streamed into either general education programs or into vocational education. Both streams are encouraged by the language policy to use a bilingual approach up to Grade 12.

The government does not choose the language of instruction; the people themselves in a particular school will select the language of instruction for their children, and that language will be whatever is dominant in that community. In urban areas and other places with more than one mother tongue, the language of instruction switches between local mother tongues and another language that the children speak (often one of the

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languages commonly used in Papua New Guinea to communicate between different language groups). In the fourth and final term of the year three of the mother tongue education, students begin hearing oral English, for the last ten weeks of their schooling.

The community selects their teachers; as teachers are appointed by the community they cannot transfer to another school or area. Parents nominate men and women who know the culture in the local area. To be selected, people must have graduated from year 10 secondary education and have a mastery of English, as the training and training materials are provided in English. The government initially selected 217 trainers nationally to train teachers. Training begins with a six-week face-to-face course that prepares trainee teachers to handle the self-instructional study units and also to understand the challenges of site-based apprentice-style training.

Training for teachers covers how children learn, how to integrate culture and whole language learning in an integrated format. Teachers are trained to translate a national curriculum framework and develop lessons with cultural teachers, and then are given 28 self-instructional units of study to complete in their site training locations throughout the year. These 28 self-instructional units are divided over the three years it takes for trainee teachers to get the certificate in elementary teaching (CET). Usually, trainee teachers are given eight books to complete each year. Instruction to students in the mother tongue schools (which are called elementary schools) is only given in the mornings, and in the afternoons teachers are expected to teach themselves with the self-instructional units. There is also some group training, where teachers (whether in training or have graduated) work together in curriculum cluster workshops. This multi-pronged approach ensures that teachers are comprehensively trained.

Teachers are not left to design curriculum and create all the necessary materials; there is significant support provided from the Ministry of Education at the central level. Books are written in English for teachers

to translate. There is a national frame for teachers to translate at the local level. Teachers are given master or shell books; with these, the structure of the stories is in place and these can then be translated and adapted to local situations as well as converted into local languages. Some subjects remain national rather than local in flavour though: maths, some social science lessons, and science use a national curriculum and materials that are translated into local languages, but not adapted to account for local cultural references. Assessment of trainee teachers covers trainer-directed training, supervised teaching, self-instructional modules and parental input on teacher commitment. Teachers either pass or fail.

There are teachers’ guides and resource books. Teachers are trained in how to do lesson plans and how to write unit plans, and they tie these in with the thematic agenda – the seasons and important events in the area. Papua New Guinea uses a cultural calendar for the school year. If there are important events on in the community, for example a land dispute or a festival, school will not be on. For example, in May, September and at Easter there are big Catholic festivals especially in Catholic agency schools, so students in those elementary schools learn about these festivals.

The cultural calendar approach also informs the curriculum model. For example, there are two seasons, wet and dry; what happens in the wet season defines the curriculum, so that what students learn in school reflects what is going on around them. The curriculum also reflects a number of cultural and other events, for example, the football season where children learn the maths and science of football. The cultures within which children grow up in dictate the teaching and learning activities in the elementary schools.

Key outcomes

This mother tongue-based multilingual education approach has been implemented successfully across Papua New Guinea with many different local languages.


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Lessons learned

1. If teachers are well-trained and are taught how to create teaching materials in the mother tongue of their students, it is possible to teach children in their mother tongues across a country, even when that country has many different local languages.

2. How teacher training is done is very important. A combination of self-learning, group learning, and trainer-directed learning ensures the best learning outcomes and is a model that can be used to ensure teachers receive both pre-service and in-service training.

3. Master books where the general storyline and structure and educational outcomes are in place are a good way to provide resources for teachers in multilingual settings. Teachers can then adapt the stories for the local context and translate them into local languages.

4. Regular teacher supervision is vital to ensuring a successful education system.

5. The ‘unity in diversity’ motto exemplifies the Papua New Guinea experience, in which the right to learning in a mother tongue is central to developing a national identity. A country should celebrate all its cultural and linguistic diversity.

6. Being literate in a mother tongue forms the basis to learning a foreign language.

6.3 Mozambique: Focus on Policy Issues

“When we talk about education, we talk about it in terms of development. So which language should we use? If we use a language that children do not understand, will we be able to achieve the objectives of education?” (Professor Sozinho Matsinhe)

Background

The colonial heritage of countries in Africa affects their language in education policies today. In Africa, Portuguese, French and Spaniard colonisers sought to assimilate local cultures into Latin culture. Local languages were not developed further and were never considered as languages for education. In Mozambique, Portuguese was the only language with official status, although the vast majority of the population did not speak this language. During the colonial period, if students spoke a language other than Portuguese at school, they would be punished by their teachers.

The British and Germans had a different approach and did not force colonised people to use the colonisers’ languages as quickly and completely. This meant that the local languages developed including grammar and vocabularies, and literatures and dictionaries were developed during the periods of colonisation. In Tanzania, the Germans worked on Swahili, the predominant language, so it is highly developed. A lot of this early language development of local languages occurred through the churches, who dominated education in the early years of colonisation.

When countries in Africa became independent, the new leaders looked to see what resources were available in which languages. If there were no resources in the local languages, they tended to choose the coloniser’s language to be the official language and encouraged the development of local languages. In countries with Latin colonisers, the Latin language was generally adopted as the official language and local languages were not developed, and so after independence the coloniser’s language was often adopted as the official/national language. In countries with Anglo-Saxon or German colonial powers local languages were developed and used in education post-independence: for example Zambia has seven languages adopted for education in the early years of education and Tanzania has adopted Swahili. This was possible because resources already existed in local languages at

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the time of independence. In 1975, Mozambique became independent.

Portuguese was adopted as the official language for historical reasons: it was part of the colonial heritage as well as the language used by the resistance in the fight for independence. The Constitution states that all other languages should be valued as well. The question then was what language should be used for education, and Portuguese was chosen. Education was a big priority at independence, and teaching went from 7am until 11pm; as children would return from school their parents would attend literacy and adult education classes in the evenings in the school buildings and residential areas where centres were created. This education was all done in Portuguese, and through big literacy campaigns the rates of illiteracy decreased from 93% at the time of independence to 72+% in a matter of years. However, the armed conflict waged by the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), with the support of the then Apartheid regime (now RENAMO is the main opposition party in the Mozambican parliament), destroyed many schools and clinics, as Apartheid South Africa bombed the country, again destroying many schools. People had “return illiteracy”, where they lost the ability to read and write in Portuguese. This occurred mainly in the rural areas that were mostly affected by the armed conflict and where Portuguese was not part and parcel of people’s daily lives, as people almost exclusively used African languages to conduct their day-to-day businesses. It is worth noting that this occurred even in the urban areas where people had more exposure to Portuguese than in the rural areas.

What they did

Mozambique currently has about 20 million inhabitants, and of these:

6.5% of Mozambicans speak Portuguese as their mother tongue.

25.2% speak Portuguese as a second language,

but how well these people speak the language is unknown.

68.3% of the population are not fluent in Portuguese (Census 1997).

Portuguese continues to be limited to urban areas, and children in urban areas often do not understand the local Mozambican languages spoken by their parents. Almost no-one in rural areas speaks Portuguese. This has implications for education. If the Mozambican government decides that education should only be in Portuguese (as was the case until relatively recently), these statistics need to be considered because it is problematic if 68% of children go to school without knowing the language of instruction (Portuguese).

The departure of the great majority of native speakers of Portuguese at independence seems to have contributed to the emergence and the spread of non-standard varieties of Portuguese. This meant that apart from the standard Portuguese used in textbooks and official documents and communiqués, new varieties have been emerging which are used by second-language speakers. These varieties seem to be competing for space in the Mozambican linguistic mosaic. This not only posed problems to the teaching of Portuguese, but also triggered big debates on what variety of Portuguese should be used, what should be considered “errors” and what should be considered an emerging variety of Mozambican Portuguese. Tasks related to curriculum design, preparation and production of new textbooks, and Portuguese language-teacher training become extremely complicated. Note that most people who teach Portuguese or undergo training to become teachers of this language do not speak sufficiently the standard European Portuguese that has been adopted as the official language of the country and sole medium of instruction at independence. So the use of Portuguese as the sole medium of instruction constituted a serious problem – school drop out and grades repetitions increased. It was therefore necessary to shed light on


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what was taking place in the Mozambican education system, particularly as far as the medium of instruction was concerned. Thus, research was undertaken focusing on the emerging varieties of Portuguese. Preliminary results indicated that the use Portuguese as the sole medium of instruction was part of the problem. The National Institute for the Development of Education (INDE) – a semi-autonomous institution that operates within the Ministry of Education – commissioned various studies that focused on the teaching of Portuguese as a second language in Mozambique. This was in early 90s. The reports of such studies confirmed that Portuguese was a barrier to or a tool of exclusion from education for the majority of children to whom Portuguese was a second language, if not a foreign language. One recommendation that was strongly made in all reports was the use of mother tongue as medium of instruction at least in the foundation phase of education. INDE was assigned the task of conducting pilot studies on the use of local languages as a medium of instruction in Mozambique. These sparked on-going debates, which marked the beginning of the policy change process. Introducing local languages into education did not mean throwing away the Portuguese, but trying to have a peaceful co-existence between this language and the local languages spoken by the vast majority of Mozambicans.

A bilingual education project known as PEBIMO began in 1993. It involved Cinyanja and Xitsonga two local languages spoken in Tete and Gaza provinces respectively. At the beginning the project involved a total of 357 learners in grade 1, and ended with 156 learners: 98 from Gaza and 58 from Tete. The choice of languages was informed and inspired by the fact that Xitsonga and Cinyanja have a long tradition of being used as medium of instruction in South Africa and Malawi respectively. Taking into account what was mentioned above, PEBIMO was a culmination of years of reflection on the use of local languages as medium of instruction in Mozambique, which includes:

(1) 1988: first workshop on the standardization of the orthographies of Mozambican local languages organized by the Nucleus for the Study of Mozambican Languages (NELIMO) based at the Faculty of Arts of Eduardo Mondlane University in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture. Apart from containing orthographies and spelling rues for these languages, the report of the workshop also recommended pilot studies on mother-tongue education.

(2) 1989 and 1990 INDE respectively organised the first and the second workshops on bilingual education. The workshop brought together people from various stakeholders, such as Radio Mozambique, Ministry of Education, Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), and In-Service Teacher Training Institute (IAP)

(3) Earlier pilot studies on bilingual adult education undertaken by INDE in collaboration with NELIMO’s linguists.

The PEBIMO pilot study, once again, proved that when children learnt in their mother tongue, their participation in the learning process was accelerated and parents became more involved in their children’s education. In other words, the gap between the home and school was reduced. Following this pilot project, INDE organised a workshop in 1997 to debate the introduction and expansion of bilingual education in Mozambique. Finally, in 2003 bilingual education was introduced in Mozambique. Considering INDE’s experience of designing, introducing the new curriculum (new national education system), preparing the learning and teaching material and undertaking the training of the respective teachers (both initial and in-service training) after independence, linguists and other stakeholders suggested a gradual (phased) approach to the introduction of a mother tongue-based multilingual education model. This phased approach allowed time for teachers to be trained and resources to be developed for each language. However, other stakeholders

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including policy makers and legislators adopted sixteen local languages at one time to be the language(s) of instruction in different regions of the country. Once the decision on mother tongue had been taken, it had to be implemented. There have been some significant improvements to primary school enrolments in recent years. Between 1992 and 2005, enrolments at primary school grew from 1.3 million to 3.5 million.15 There may be some relationship with these increased enrolments and the increase in awareness, materials in local languages and then formal changes to language policy that occurred over a similar period.

There were lots of political issues affecting the decision on mother tongue education. Chief among them is the fact that Mozambique has no clear language policy, including language policy in education, even during colonisation. It becomes difficult to introduce all languages at any one time because resources are constrained and all teachers cannot be trained. Initial and ongoing training for teachers was needed to train teachers how to teach in their mother tongue. Teaching materials could be created by experts, or by teachers and parents. Because of a lack of a clear language policy, bilingual education is not compulsory, so parents can decide whether they will send their children to Portuguese schools or to bilingual education schools.

Key outcomes

Children learned faster in the initial pilots and research with mother tongue-based multilingual education. They also participated actively in the classroom and parents also became more active in their children’s education, and the examination pass rate of children increased dramatically.

Lessons learned

1. No-one can offer the answer or the perfect model and language policy for Timor-Leste. However, looking at

experiences around the world and what others have learnt and seeing what they have done can be useful.

2. The political and policy changes for language in development should reflect the development goals of the country. Promoting bilingual education in the early years of schooling has proven success in Mozambique, and it helps maintain equity in the education system.

3. Having one official/national language is not the only factor that can strengthen national unity. Other things can be used to strengthen national unity, rather than relying on an official/national language. For example, in Brazil, soccer and samba bring the country together.

4. Policy should not be designed by experts without consultation. Policies should be drafted and discussed with linguistic institutions and draft policies discussed with the general population. Policies need to have the contributions of all stakeholders, otherwise they will not be implemented. It cannot just be experts or external advisers who choose a policy. The policy must fit with the local situation. Experts define the policies, but implementation of the policy has nothing to do with language experts, but with language users and those in the education system. Consultation must be done as the policy is being designed and developed.

5. Partnerships need to be sought, and all stakeholders need to be brought in to the process, particularly with developing, but also with implementing the language in education policy.

6. If it is decided that the first three grades should be taught in the mother tongue, the process has to be monitored and evaluated, and what is being done must be continuously assessed.

7. The use of a mother tongue as medium of instruction does not imply neglecting the learning and teaching of Portuguese. On the contrary, it may help learn and teach this language better.

15 DFID Mozambique, Education Fact Sheet. Available at http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/mozambique-education-factsheet.pdf, downloaded 13 May 2008.


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Box 6.1 Challenges and Concerns for Implementing Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education Programs

Dr Benjamim de Araújo e Corte-Real raised a concern following Professor Sozinho Matsinhe’s presentation. After noting the challenges in the Mozambicans faced implementing their policy to introduce mother tongues into the education system, Dr Corte-Real was concerned that Timor-Leste would have a negative experience implementing a similar policy.

UNESCO’s book “Promoting Literacy in Multilingual Settings” acknowledges the challenges in implementing this type of policy:

“In those cases where a [mother tongue-based multilingual education] programme is attempted, it is too often 1) poorly planned and implemented, 2) with inadequately trained teachers, 3) containing low-quality classroom materials, and 4) given too little time allowance for learners to build a strong educational foundation in their first language and a good bridge to the second (school) language”. (UNESCO 2006, page 13)

It is true that there are challenges, but Timor-Leste has the opportunity to learn from the experiences of other countries to address these issues and avoid or at least minimise the challenges.

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“We do not come here to tell you what to do but to share with you to help you decide what is best for your children.” (Dr. Kerry Taylor-Leech).

“For the Timorese the experiences presented by others are most important for us because it is the same experience that will help us know how to use language, especially to use different languages (many languages) so that we are helping children to learn how to use the official languages and their mother tongues.” (Conference Participant).

There are a number of lessons that Timor-Leste can learn from the experiences of other countries with regard to mother tongue-based multilingual education. Those countries that have implemented this model of education either in one area or in many have consistently found that children who learn first in their mother tongues do much better at school, stay in education longer, and become far more proficient in the official/national languages than those children who learn literacy and begin their schooling in a second language, such as the official/national language.

A number of examples of mother tongue-based multilingual education were presented to a greater or lesser depth both at the conference and within this report. The following key lessons emerged:

Content learning, new language learning and literacy should be developed separately

Support for teachers is vital

The longer the bridge, the better the outcome (i.e. the longer period learning in the mother tongue before the

Key Lessons for Timor-Leste

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transition to the second language begins, the better the foundation. In the “ideal” model, the transition takes eight years, and this is the model adopted in Papua New Guinea. In other countries a shorter bridge is adopted).

Working with communities is important and has many benefits (especially for children’s educational outcomes). It is more likely to happen if initial instruction begins in the mother tongue

Collaboration with a range of partners can bring together technical expertise, resources and the ability to implement mother tongue-based multilingual education

Continuous training of teachers leads to the best results

Orthographies are needed for the local languages to enable children to learn literacy in their mother tongues. However, note that in Bolivia, policymakers decided that education in different mother tongues could begin prior to standardised orthographies being developed and disseminated.

Good training for teacher development in a multilingual setting requires:

The use of multilingual references and references to local culture, traditions and literacies

Ensuring that teachers know well the mother tongues of the children that they are teaching

That teachers are trained to develop books and other resources

That teachers are not abandoned after their initial training but provide continuous/ongoing support and training


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Mother tongue-based multilingual education policies are about helping children learn most effectively, ensuring that they achieve good developmental and educational outcomes and that they become fluent in the official/national languages. If Timor-Leste is to gain the benefits associated with mother tongue-based multilingual education, then change is needed in three areas:

Conclusions from the Conference: What Is Needed to Make Multilingual Education Work in Timor-Leste

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A. Research and Policy

There are different types of policy support and change that could or should be used in Timor-Leste to support and develop various interventions that will result in a good mother tongue-based multilingual policy. These include:

UNICEF Timor-Leste/2007/SeeUNICEF Timor-Leste/2008/Vas

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Need to develop a comprehensive policy for bilingual education, with the Ministry of Education National Directorate of Curricula, Materials and Evaluation supporting the further development of bilingual (or multilingual) education

Financial and human resources need to be allocated to develop multilingual education

Need to do research:

- into where different languages are being used in Timor-Leste to be able to adequately plan a mother tongue-based multilingual education program,

- on levels of proficiency in different languages to assess the need for a mother tongue-based multilingual education program, and

- on the impact of language on education, particularly exploring children out of school (not enrolled) to see if language influences their access in the Timor-Leste context.

Develop fluency in the official languages for both teachers and students.

Need to ensure commitment of government officials is important to promote the importance of multilingual education.

B. What Teachers Need

Proficiency and fluency in the official languages and mother tongues

Skills and knowledge about teaching a second language, and manuals for doing this

Teacher training and support for teachers. The role of teachers is crucial in teaching children to learn; therefore teachers need to be supported and trained systematically and continuously on how to enhance their proficiency in the official languages and the use of mother tongue.

Textbooks, teaching materials and teaching guides to be translated from the official languages into a range of Timorese mother tongues

Clear advice and policy directions authorising them to teach in local languages. Having multiple mother tongues in a classroom is the exception not the norm – teachers need to have the authority to choose (either alone or in conjunction with parents and the community) the language of instruction. It was suggested that the government give authority through a circular to authorise teachers to teach in the local languages

An awareness campaign to convince teachers of kindergarten and Grades 1 and 2 of the importance of using local languages

Supportive parents and communities: communities and parents need to be convinced of the importance of their children learning in their mother tongues, as a step towards learning the official languages.

Good resource materials for teaching in a multilingual or bilingual education system created in Timor-Leste’s many mother tongues. Based on the experiences of other countries, it is possible to develop materials for all languages and regions:

- Government can train teachers to create their own teaching learning materials

- Communities can support teachers to develop their own teaching learning materials

- Communities can be involved in developing resources – by providing stories, parents and community members can create a lot of content in the language in which the children will be taught

Appropriate recruitment; preferably recruit parent-teachers or teachers from the local area to ensure they are proficient in the mother tongue(s) in that area, or otherwise train teachers from outside the area in the mother tongues.


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C. Language Development

Develop standardised orthographies for Timorese local languages. These orthographies need to be disseminated and socialised.

Further develop and disseminate the Tetum orthography. This is to be done by the INL with support from the government.

Develop local languages through:

- Inviting people to write history in their own dialects and use pictures

- Investigating the creation of a repository/centre where people from all over Timor-Leste could come and write and record stories and songs etc. in their

mother tongues and other languages (one speaker shared the experience of the Borneo Literature Bureau, which used this approach. Its role was to find and publish written materials in local languages)

Use the media to promote official languages and other local languages.

Ensure that INL has sufficient resources and capacity.

The Next Steps

The ultimate goal of the conference was to reflect on options and identify action areas for Timor-Leste so that children’s learning is improved. Each cultural context is different and unique and needs to be considered properly, but development of children’s brains and how children learn is universal. Next steps that were identified at the conference include:

The Working Group that was established for this conference to continue to meet to focus on the conclusions of the conference (presented above) and move them forward, for example:

- Conduct research into language use and proficiency, and barriers to education across Timor-Leste

- Consider doing a pilot study of a mother tongue-based multilingual program in Timor-Leste in one or several districts

- Develop standardised orthographies for Timorese local languages.

A Ministry of Education delegation should attend the SEAMEO conferences in July 2008.

To further deepen understanding, consider sending a delegation from Timor-Leste to Cambodia, as the Under-Secretary of State Mr. Chey Chap indicated at the conference that he is very happy to receive a group from Timor-Leste.




CARE International

CARE International

CARE International


UNICEF Timor-Leste/2008UNICEF Timor-Leste/2008/Vas

CARE International



Providing children with basic education ofgood quality and relevance is the best investmentthe world can make in its future.Millennium Development Goal 2and Education for All Goal 6

Credits:Consultant/writer: Beth RushtonDesign: Yulian Setyanto, UNICEF Consultant

Acknowledgements:Conference Interpreters: Translation/Interpretation Cell, UNMITConference Volunteers: UNTL Students

conference on bilingual education

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