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A Survey of Languages Spoken in a Sample of PRP Target Schools

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A Survey of Languages Spoken in a Sample of PRP Target Schools USAID-funded Pakistan Reading Project 0 A Survey of Languages Spoken in a Sample of PRP Target Schools The authors’ views expressed in this document do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) or the United States Government. USAID-funded Pakistan Reading Project 1 Contents Introduction ..............................................................................................................................................................3 Language Background .............................................................................................................................................3 Purpose of the Language Survey .............................................................................................................................3 Sampling ....................................................................................................................................................................4 Data Collection .........................................................................................................................................................4 Summary Results ......................................................................................................................................................6 Children’s Home Language ....................................................................................................................................6 Languages that teachers use in the classroom ........................................................................................................7 Languages that children use while communicating with each other in classrooms ...............................................8 Language that teachers use while communicating with each other ......................................................................10 Do the children have a favorite personality/teacher? Which language they hear that personality speaking? ......12 In what language do children prefer telling jokes/stories if they want/need to? ..................................................14 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................................................15 Annexes ....................................................................................................................................................................16 Annex A ...................................................................................................................................................................16 Other Data Charts ..................................................................................................................................................16 Annex B ................................................................................................................................................................22 Language Mapping Survey Questionnaire ...........................................................................................................22 USAID-funded Pakistan Reading Project 2 A Survey of Languages Spoken in a Sample of PRP Target Schools Introduction USAID-funded Pakistan Reading Project (PRP) is a five-year project with the objective to support the provincial and regional departments of education throughout Pakistan to improve reading skills of children in grades 1 and 2. In Punjab, PRP is working with Teacher Training Institutes only. The PRP team is adopting a student-centered model to intervene across the four crucial groups that contribute to children’s reading success: educators, school environments, education policies and systems, and communities. Piloting and testing early grade mother tongue materials that will facilitate reading is one of the activities that PRP will be undertaking. Since PRP is working in six regions of Pakistan where several different languages are spoken in communities, USAID has tasked PRP to create a map of languages spoken in PRP target school communities. The purpose of this exercise is to get a comprehensive picture of the languages in which children and teachers communicate and explore policy and programmatic options that would cater to the language needs of the students. Language Background Given the disparate ethno-linguistic structure of the Pakistani society, the government of Pakistan has used language as a binding factor for national unity. According to 1998 census, the following is the distribution of languages spoken in households at the national level: Table 1 - Pakistan - Percentage Distribution of Households by Language Spoken 1998 Census (Government of Pakistan) Pakistan Urdu Punjabi Pashtu Sindhi Balochi Siraiki Others 7.6 44.1 15.4 14.1 3.6 10.5 4.7 Despite Urdu being the household language of only a minority of the population (only 8%), it has been designated as the national language of Pakistan followed by English, which has remained the main language of government operations. Although steps were recently taken to make Urdu the official language for government operations, transitioning from 70 years of operations in the English language to Urdu will take some years. While the government of Pakistan has allowed private initiatives for the development and promotion of the local languages, establishing an active national policy for the advancement of ethnic-based languages, especially as the medium of instruction at schools, has been slow to take root. Purpose of the Language Survey The purpose of this survey was to create a landscape of languages that are currently spoken in PRP target schools. The landscape is intended to provide an insight into the breadth of languages spoken and preferred by children and teachers so that dialogue on the implementation of mother tongue instruction in early grades could be held on informed grounds. PRP’s scope of work includes development of early grade reading materials in Pashtu. It is hoped that the results of this survey combined with results of PRP’s piloting of the reading materials in Pashtu, USAID-funded Pakistan Reading Project 3 A Survey of Languages Spoken in a Sample of PRP Target Schools policy and programmatic dialogue will be established with the respective governments to further the policy development and implementation in this domain of the education sector in Pakistan. Sampling For the language mapping exercise, PRP surveyed all PRP schools in the target districts in Cohort 1 where interventions were being provided during April – November 2015. The sample was further expanded slightly when from Cohort 2 districts 15% of PRP target schools were surveyed in January- March 2016. PRP ensured that location (urban and rural) and gender (boys and girls) were equally represented in this survey. Data Collection Primary data was gathered through USAID-funded Pakistan Reading Project (PRP) staff, School Support Associates (SSAs), during their school support visits. In order to explore languages used in different scenarios, SSAs observed classrooms to see which language teachers were using to teach the subject matter and while explaining the concepts. They also observed the language used by the students during interaction with teachers and with their peers. The data collectors also conducted Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with children and interviewed teachers for listing common languages used by children and teachers in the playground and at home. The data was later entered in M&E IS survey and studies module as well as SPSS for further processing and analysis. For a list of schools surveyed in each region and the cohort distribution please see Table 2 below: Table 2 - Regions and Schools Surveyed for Language Mapping Province/Region Districts No. of Schools AJK Cohort 1 Bhimber 200 Muzaffarabad 374 Mirpur 238 Cohort 2 Hattian 86 Kotli 162 Neelum 58 AJK Total 1,118 Balochistan Cohort 1 Killa Saifullah 97 Loralai 158 Pishin 210 Quetta 197 Ziarat 38 Cohort 2 Jaffarabad 29 Jhal Magshi 9 Kachhi 15 Lasbela 40 Naseerabad 14 USAID-funded Pakistan Reading Project 4 A Survey of Languages Spoken in a Sample of PRP Target Schools Sibi 14 Balochistan Total 821 GB Cohort 1 Astore 79 Skardu 227 Cohort 2 Ghizer 13 Hunza Nagar 12 GB Total 331 ICT Cohort 1 Islamabad 198 Islamabad Total 198 KP Cohort 1 Abbottabad 343 Lower Dir 308 Malakand 141 Mansehra 431 Swat 284 Cohort 2 Charsadda 198 Mardan 163 Nowshera 188 Peshawar 151 Swabi 235 KP Total 2,442 Sindh Cohort 1 Karachi 102 Cohort 2 Jamshoro 26 Sindh Total 128 Grand Total 5,038 The data was collected from 5,038 PRP intervention schools (2,772 boys, 2,213 girls and 53 mixed schools). The chart below shows region wise number of schools from where the data was collected. The survey questionnaire had 23 questions covering classroom, home, play-ground, etc., language usage of children as well as languages used during classroom instruction. Please see the survey instrument in Annex B. For this report, PRP presents the results of the most pertinent aspects of the survey that provide an overall picture of the language usage in PRP target schools and communities. Chart 1- Total Number of Schools Surveyed for Language Mapping by Gender 1400 1207 1233 1200 1000 643 800 471 551 600 268 218 400 124 74 113 30 53 45 200 4 2 0 0 2 0 Azad Kashmir Balochistan Federal Gilgit Khyber Sindh Capital Baltistan Pakhtunkhwa Territory Regions Female Male Mix USAID-funded Pakistan Reading Project 5 A Survey of Languages Spoken in a Sample of PRP
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