Meanwhile the math scores for children who had been in English-only classrooms for all of their basic education gradually increased from 24.9 percent in grade 2 to 34.3 percent in grade 6. This very slow rate of improvement might reflect their slow process of learning English well enough to understand the content of their classes.

To summarize: Research relating to this question shows us that MT instruction does not delay children’ s academic progress in early education. In fact, we see the opposite. Children in MLE schools learn more than students from their same language community who attend non- MLE schools. An important point from the Kom research is that students in the early-exit MLE programme suffered educationally when they moved to English-only instruction after Grade 3.

Does MTB MLE prepare students for secondary schooling?

Research evidence on this question is still scarce. In order to collect the necessary information, researchers need to follow the progress of individual students for five or six years after they finish primary school. Fortunately, there is data from two research studies, one from Guatemala and one from Cameroon that help to answer this question.

In 1999-2000 two researchers conducted a survey of four secondary schools in Guatemala that had mostly indigenous Mayan students. The researchers asked the Mayan students whether the primary school they attended for their basic education provided instruction only in Spanish or in some combination of Spanish and their MT. The survey produced 1,202 usable responses. The results are reported in Figure 3.

MTB MLE RESOURCE KIT Including the Excluded: Promoting Multilingual Education

Figure 3: Primary school background of Mayan children in secondary schools

Number of Students

32