Foreword
Multilingual communities are among the most vibrant in Asia-Pacific and yet education systems in many countries rarely reflect this rich cultural and linguistic diversity in their classrooms. Children who are forced to learn in a language other than their mother tongue often face significant difficulties in accessing, completing and benefitting from formal education. Full access to inclusive quality education in the learner’ s first language is an essential condition for peace, sustainable development, poverty reduction, economic growth, decent employment, gender equality and responsible global citizenship. Unfortunately, most of the region’ s education systems fail to recognize or understand the role that bi / multilingual education can play in increasing enrolment, retention and achievement.
UNESCO Bangkok developed the Advocacy Kit for Promoting Multilingual Education: Including the Excluded in 2007 to help remove barriers for children from non-dominant language communities in accessing, completing and benefitting from a quality basic education. The Advocacy Kit was intended to serve as a tool that policy makers, education practitioners, specialists and ethnic minority language speakers could use to raise awareness on the importance of mother tongue-based multilingual education( MTB MLE). The kit has been widely translated, adapted and used throughout the region.
MTB MLE RESOURCE KIT Including the Excluded: Promoting Multilingual Education
There have been many changes in the MTB MLE field in recent years as a result of new research studies, policy developments and implementation practices. There is much to share about MTB MLE. The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals( SDGs) provides us with the ideal opportunity to do so. The original Advocacy Kit has been updated to reflect the new agenda and to make it more relevant to country efforts in planning, integrating and implementing SDG4-Education 2030 and other relevant SDGs within existing national plans and strategies.
This updated MTB-MLE Resource Kit is a comprehensive, in-depth and insightful tool emphasizing that the mother tongue approach is at the heart of inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all. It advocates making education systems more responsive to cultural and linguistic diversity and provides a plethora of insights and recommendations for developing MTB MLE programmes that respect the rights of children and learners. It also encourages readers to think about the importance of language issues and to investigate them further. This updated MTB MLE Resource Kit builds on research findings and experiences gained over many years by many organizations and individuals working in this field. It is my hope that vi