By Judith Nyakaisiki
On 5th February 2025, Uwezo
Uganda participated in the Language Development and Advocacy Network (LDAN)
Workshop. The Workshop aimed to:
- Advance
ideas, connections and proposals highlighting the roles
of languages and communication in
development
- Ensure that issues of concern represent broad, diverse,
equitable and inclusive perspectives, and
- Engage
with organisations and communities from different world regions working
within this field to
collaborate, advise, learn from, shape and help steer this area of
interest, including developing policy,
research and practice priorities; informing researchers,
decision-makers and practitioners; all while
encouraging local perspectives, priorities and proposals.
Dr Mary
Goretti Nakabugo, Uwezo Uganda Executive Director, was one of the panelists at
the workshop. Her presentation centered on the relevance of LDAN to a
developing country context such as Uganda. She mainly focused on the issue of
using mother tongue / local language as a medium of instruction and how
this relates to learning outcomes. She shared that, in Uganda, there is an
existing language policy, which requires the use of pupils' mother tongues or a
common area language as a medium of instruction from Primary 1 to Primary 3.
She argued that while the policy is well-intentioned, it is faced with a
number of challenges in practice and has not yet translated into desirable
learning outcomes. For example, due to the linguistic diversity of Uganda even
within smaller geographical areas, choosing to use one local language as a
medium of instruction in one given village may exclude some learners who do not
speak the language, thus, affecting their learning.
In all this, she noted teachers
to be a key factor, yet they have hardly been well-supported to implement the
language policy. A recent spotlight study report on basic education completion
and foundational learning in Uganda highlighted a scarcity of curriculum
documents and teacher guides. Where these existed, they were all in English,
inserting more pressure on the teachers to be language interpreters while
delivering the curriculum (Nakabugo et al 2024)[1].
In her final submission, Dr
Nakabugo argued that, improving children’s learning outcomes requires much more
than simply having in place a language in education policy that requires the
use of local language as a medium of instruction. Other factors, such as
support to teachers, availability of resources, the support to learners and
parental and community awareness of the value of the policy need to be
considered.
The full presentation can be accessed here
