Malta’s varied colonial past has often raised the question of what language should prevail in the education sector. Almost a century ago, the battle between the use of Italian and English in public administration, the law courts and even in education waged on until Malta gained independence and Maltese and English were recognised as official languages.

Yet, the language question has not yet been fully resolved in the educational sector as, despite any official guidelines on which language teachers should use in the classroom, many educators adopt a pragmatic approach and use either Maltese or English or both to ensure their lessons are understood by the great majority of their students.

Maltese society is unavoidably becoming multi-ethnical with the flow of migrants who speak little or no English or Maltese, mixed marriages between persons with different mother tongues and cultural issues that influence some local families in their choice of the language they speak at home. No wonder many young pupils find the mastery of English and Maltese a hard nut to crack in their first school years with many speaking a hybrid language that is neither good English nor Maltese.

It is, therefore, encouraging that, following a consultative process, the Ministry of Education has approved a language policy for the early years in Malta and Gozo that stipulates that all children should have equal opportunities to develop and practise both languages equally.

This policy is not much different from that of other countries like the US where education policymakers are trying to crack the anti-bilingual wall in terms of education. In some schools in California both English and Spanish are used equally in the education of young pupils many of whom come from Mexico and other South American countries.

The implementation of bilingual education in primary schools will not be without its challenges. The language spoken at the home of pupils will affect their ability to absorb the teaching that is imparted to them in the classroom that, presumably, will be either in English or Maltese.

The goal should be to give students education in all core areas in both English and Maltese – acquiring English and maintain Maltese if one is a pupil that lives in a family where Maltese is the main language spoken at home and learning both English and Maltese for those pupils who are not fluent in either of these languages.

This will be a tough challenge for teachers who may need to retrain themselves to acquire the skills of teaching in different languages to pupils of mixed language abilities. The task becomes even more arduous if high standards of both written and spoken Maltese and English are set in early primary school curricula. It is a sad reality that the standards of written and spoken Maltese and English are not what they used to be three or four decades ago when reading good books was a far more common practice among people of all ages.

Socio-educational research maintains that the reason why bilingual education programmes produce higher-achieving students has to do with cognitive benefits such as enhanced understanding of mathematics, creativity and selective retention. It makes very little sense to block the use of either Maltese or English until secondary school.

It is, therefore, essential that teachers must be able to adequately switch from one language to another, based on informed and judicious choices rather than haphazard ones, to facilitate learners’ acquisition of a language.

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