October 31, 2025
Ghana’s authorities launched the coverage as a way of cultural empowerment after generations of English, inherited from colonial rule and white supremacy.
The Ghanaian authorities has introduced a new mandate requiring the usage of “mother-tongue” native languages in all colleges as a part of its effort to protect and promote the nation’s cultural id.
On Oct. 24, Schooling Minister Haruna Iddrisu stated lecturers are actually required instantly to make use of native languages as the first medium of instruction in fundamental colleges, Africa Information experiences. The coverage represents a serious step in bettering studying outcomes and preserving Ghana’s cultural id, whereas difficult a long time of English-language dominance within the nation’s schooling system.
The coverage change follows a 2022 research by UNESCO and the World Financial institution, which discovered that kids be taught extra successfully and confidently when taught of their mom tongue, significantly in early schooling. Instructing of their native language helps construct a powerful basis in literacy and cognitive abilities, with analysis exhibiting that kids usually tend to learn with comprehension and obtain educational success once they perceive the language of instruction.
Ghana’s authorities launched the coverage as a way of cultural empowerment after generations of English, inherited from colonial rule and white supremacy, as the first language of instruction. The strategy of aligning schooling with cultural id can also be gaining traction in nations resembling South Africa, Kenya, and Tanzania.
Nonetheless, the coverage shift presents important challenges. Ghana is house to over 70 languages, with solely about 11 formally acknowledged for schooling and broadcasting, together with Akan (Twi and Fante), Ewe, Ga, Dagbani, Nzema, and Gonja, making it difficult to pick out a single language for instruction.
The federal government says colleges ought to train within the “dominant native language” of every space, however defining this isn’t all the time simple. Most textbooks are in English, so translating supplies into a number of native languages, coaching lecturers to make use of them, and making certain nationwide consistency may take years.
“We already wrestle to get fundamental supplies in English,” one trainer in Accra stated. “Now we’ll want books and coaching in 10 completely different languages. It’s a good suggestion, however we’re not prepared.”
Ghana’s first try to implement mother-tongue instruction in colleges was within the early 2000s, however the coverage light after a couple of years resulting from restricted help, poor execution, and parental resistance, as mother and father feared it could hinder their kids’s English proficiency.
Critics argue that educating in colonial languages can isolate college students and restrict comprehension. In distinction, others fear that eradicating English too early may put African college students at a drawback in world areas the place English stays dominant.
“It’s a troublesome steadiness,” a college lecturer, Dr Ernest Kissi of Kwame Nkrumah College of Science and Know-how, stated. “We wish to protect our id, however we are able to’t ignore the realities of world communication and alternative.”
RELATED CONTENT: Search For Lacking Ohio Lady Intensifies; Issues Mount After Communication Lapse
