Between English and mother tongue: Kenya’s education language dilemma

Kericho, Kenya – When Lona Chepkemoi walked into a technical college classroom in 2023, she found something she had rarely experienced during her years in school: She could understand what the teacher was saying. After leaving primary school in 2008, Chepkemoi had failed her final exam, and her family could not afford to send her to secondary school. For years, the dream of becoming a fashion designer seemed out of reach. Then a scholarship from her local member of parliament gave her a second chance. But what surprised the now 33-year-old mother of five was not returning to education. It was hearing lessons delivered partly in Kalenjin, her mother tongue, she said. “When I got to college, I felt at home because the language of instruction was my mother tongue [Kalenjin], and was mixed with a bit of Swahili and English, unlike in school when teachers only taught in English and exams were strictly only in English. Language here was accommodating, and it made me feel happy because I understood the concept quite well,” she told Al Jazeera. For Chepkemoi, the difference went beyond comfort, it was comprehension. Her experience reflects a wider global reality. According to UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) reports, about 40 percent of learners worldwide are not taught in a language they understand well, rising to about 90 percent in some low- and middle-income countries. …