LAHORE: Linguists, educationists and researchers from home and abroad sat down on Friday to determine the role of regional, national and global languages in the education system of Pakistan, the current practice of teachings of languages and identify the key gaps and challenges that ultimately contribute topoor studentlearning.

Attending a two-day conference on Language and Learning organised by the Society for Advancement of Education (SAHE) in league with the British Council, experts such as Beaconhouse National University Dean Dr Tariq Rahman, Punjab University`s Institute of Languages in-charge Dr Maria Garcia, University of Sydney`s Dr Linda Tsung and Dr John Simpson, senior adviser, English for Education Systems, British Council Sub-Saharan Africa also reviewed policies regarding the medium of instruction being employed in schools across Pakistan.

In her keynote address, Dr Carol Benson from Teachers College, Columbia University, the US advocated the benefits for the usage of first language (mother tongue) in making students understand subjects in multilingual contexts, and also enabling them to switch over to second or third language without any difficulty.

She highlighted the importance of mother language and other regional languages. Keeping in view various dimensions and country-to-country variations, an enabling language education policy should be derived from learning and experiences of other countries about how and when a child should be taught different language(s). To this end, she mentioned how various experiments conducted in multilingual context proved useful.Dr Rahman said Pakistan`s education policies had been revolving around modernisation, vernacularisiation, Islamisation and privatisation, gaining little or nothing as a result.

`Elite education is in English and the interests of our children dictate our policies,` he said, explaining as to why students of majority schools in Pakistan were not proficient in languages and therefore were unable to understand their subjects.

In his welcome address, SAHE Executive Director Abbas Rashid said Pakistan was home to a diversity of languages which presented a complex set of challenges for its education system. `Language plays a key role in determining the quality of education that children receive, therefore considerations about language learning and medium of instruction in particular are crucial for improving quality of learning.

He said the National EducationPolicy 2009 provided for regional languages to be employed at school level, but the practice varied widely across provinces. Due to its status as the national language, Urdu remained the medium of instruction for several public schools despite the fact that it was not the mother tongue for majority of the population. Due to the status of English as the global lingua franca and its role in enabling better employment opportunities, there was an increased demand for English-medium instruction across schools in Pakistan.

In fact, Punjab, and more recently Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has formally introduced English as medium of instruction in public schools at earlier stages. Two language studies conducted by SAHE in government schools across Punjab and Sindh respectively documented that teachers were not suitably prepared to use English as medium of instruction.