Curriculum and instructional materials. Policy makers provide clear directions regarding MTB MLE curriculum, focusing specifically on these points:
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Teachers use only the MT for instruction in early grades. They use the MT and the school language for instruction in middle to upper primary and they use the MT to support the school language in the final year of the programme.( See the language education example above.)
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Students’ MT is taught as a subject( listening, speaking, reading and writing) from the first year of the programme to the end of primary school. The MT is the first language of literacy and provides the foundation for learning to read and write other languages.
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The curriculum provides time for students to gain a basic level of oral fluency in the official school language before they are expected to read and write it.
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Tests for math, science and other academic subjects are given in the language( s) used for instruction for that subject. When the students’ MT and L2 are both used for instruction, tests include items in both languages so they are assessing students’ knowledge of the subject, and not their L2 ability.
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Mainstream and MTB MLE learning competencies for all academic subjects except the official language( s) are the same for all primary grades; only the language of instruction is different.( Again, see example above.)
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Grade 1-5 learning competencies for the official school language are adjusted to allow more time for MTB MLE students who must learn to understand and speak the language before they can read and write it.
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Mainstream and MTB MLE learning competencies for the official school language are the same only in the last year of primary school.
MTB MLE RESOURCE KIT Including the Excluded: Promoting Multilingual Education
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Instructional materials, based directly on the MTB MLE curriculum, are developed for each grade and provided for each teacher in the programme. Since MTB MLE teachers are bilingual and biliterate, their teaching materials can be written in the official school language.
Reading and learning materials. Policy makers ensure that capable and respected MT speakers from the minority language communities are identified and equipped to develop graded reading materials and other classroom materials in the students’ MT. Policy makers also ensure that sufficient numbers of those materials are printed and distributed to each classroom and that there are safe storage containers to keep them. 4
4 A resource for developing MT graded reading materials can be found at http:// bloomlibrary. org / landing.
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