20 Good practices • In the Philippines, awareness-raising has helped minority parents to understand the value of education in their language, and dispel fears that their children would not learn the ‘language of power’ as quickly as possible. • In Bolivia, in 2008 the government set up three public indigenous universities, Universidades Indígenas Bolivianas Comunitarias Interculturales Productivas, for the three largest indigenous minorities (Aymara, Quechua and Guaraní), which develop and use minority languages for tertiary education. • In Senegal, students taught in their mother tongue achieved a pass rate of 65 per cent, compared to the national average of 50.9 per cent for those taught in the official language.35 • In Guatemala, the long-term cost savings linked to the use of mother tongue teaching of minorities are estimated to be equal to the cost of providing primary education for 100,000 students, or a potential saving of over US $5 million.36 • In Mali, education in the mother tongue of minorities is 19 per cent less expensive than education exclusively in the official language because of lower dropout and repetition rates.37 • In Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Eritrea, the use of a child’s own language as the main language of instruction for the first 6–8 years led to reduced repetition and dropout rates, improved learning results and other benefits.38 • In the United States, schools that use minority languages to communicate with parents have been shown to engage with them better, increase their involvement and improve their understanding of their children’s education.39 • India illustrates the proportionality principle in public education; more than 30 minority languages are used as the medium of instruction in public schools, and usually Hindi or English gradually introduced in later years of schooling. • Tanzania started using Kiswahili instead of English in 2015 as the main medium of instruction in all levels of primary and secondary education in recognition of the overall positive effects of education being provided in the mother tongue of most of its children. • In Italy, the German- and Ladin-speaking minorities make up only a very small percentage of the population, but are concentrated in a single region. Their concentration allows the use of each language as a medium of instruction in public schools, as well as at the tertiary level in the case of the larger German-speaking group in a trilingual public university. 35 Agence universitaire de la francophonie, Les langues de scolarisation en Afrique francophone: Enjeux et repères pour l’action, Rapport général (AUF: Paris, 2010), p. 83. Patrinos, H. and Velez, E (note 28). World Bank (note 2). Alidou, H. et al., ‘Optimizing learning and education in Africa: the language factor, stock-taking review on mother-tongue and bilingual education in sub-Saharan Africa’ (Association for the Development of Education in Africa, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit: Paris, 2006), p. 31. Ramirez, A.Y.F., ‘Dismay and disappointment: Parental involvement of Latino immigrant parents’, Urban Review, vol. 35, no. 2 (2003), p. 93. 36 37 38 39