Decisions about languages to teach and use as part of formal schooling directly impact educational outcomes globally. They influence the accessibility of content and create implicit messages about whether students’ heritages and identities are welcome and capable of succeeding at school.
Current language policies in many contexts are negatively impacting educational opportunities for indigenous and migrant speakers of minoritized languages as well as majority language speakers who are not motivated to learn additional languages. Statistics suggest that as many as 40 percent of the world’s children are studying in languages they do not fully understand, while in the United Kingdom and the United States, study of languages other than English is dropping dramatically.
