A/HRC/43/47 48. What this describes is at the same time an essential aspect of Sustainable Development Goal 4 on ensuring inclusive and quality education for all and promoting lifelong learning. Inclusive and quality education for members of linguistic minorities means, as far as is practicable, education in their own language. Not using a minority language as a medium of instruction where this is possible is to provide education but not which is of equal value or effect. As demonstrated in numerous studies, teaching children in a language other than their own is not education of the same quality as that of children who are taught in their mother tongue. 49. Studies and practices in many countries demonstrate that an appropriate and proportionate use of minority languages can increase inclusion, communication and trust between members of minorities and authorities. This is not simply a matter of authorities using a minority language once a minority has reached a numerical or percentage threshold, since every country and situation is unique. Factors that may be considered in determining the appropriate scale of use of a minority language by public authorities, or as to what is a sufficient number or is justified in a particular case, will depend on the circumstances. Prominent among these would be the already existing use of a minority language by State authorities, the number of speakers of a minority language, the level of demand for the use of a minority language, the territorial concentration of the minority, a State’s available resources in light of any additional costs in training or materials, the type of service being requested in the minority language and the relative ease or level of difficulty in responding to the demand. 50. Studies around the world, including some published by the World Bank, UNESCO and the United Nations Children’s Fund, arrive at broadly similar results on the effects of education in a minority’s mother tongue,12 combined with quality teaching of the official language, which are that it: (a) Is more cost-effective in the long term; (b) Reduces dropout and repetition rates; (c) Leads to noticeably better academic results, particularly for girls; (d) Improves levels of literacy and fluency in both the mother tongue and the official or majority language; (e) Leads to greater family and community involvement and support. 51. The use of minority languages in a State’s administrative and other public activities thus involves fundamental issues of inclusiveness, participation, access, quality and effectiveness.13 52. Children thus stay in school longer, obtain on average better grades, and obtain on average a higher degree of fluency in both the official language and their own language.14 Put differently, minority students taught only in the official language will on average repeat grades more often, drop out of school more frequently, receive worse results, end up later in life with the lowest paying jobs and highest unemployment rates, and learn the official language less well than students who were taught in their own language. If persons belonging to linguistic minorities have a responsibility to integrate into the wider society, then it would seem that this can be best achieved through effectively teaching them in their 12 13 14 10 See generally, UNESCO, Improving the Quality of Mother Tongue-based Literacy and Learning: Case Studies from Asia, Africa and South America (Bangkok, UNESCO, 2008). For a list of some of these studies, see United Nations Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Language Rights of Linguistic Minorities. For example, in one ranking of high schools in France (lycées) for 2013, the top educational facility for the whole country was the Lycée Diwan, where teaching is done in the minority Breton language rather than the country’s only official language. This school also had a higher average fluency in the French language than schools that taught in French, even though most of the instruction was in Breton.