Challenges of Effective Implementation of The Mother-Tongue Education Policy in South Western Nigerian Primary Schools

Abstract

The medium of instruction goes a long way toward determining the quality of education provided and the quality of learners produced. There are prospects in educating the children through their mother tongue. However, there are challenges to the effective implementation of the mother-tongue education (MTE) policy in a multicultural and multilingual country like Nigeria, especially in the South-West geopolitical zone. This study, therefore, investigated the challenges to the effective implementation of the MTE policy in primary schools in South-western Nigeria. The study adopted a survey research method. Two hundred and thirty-nine primary school teachers who were members of the National Association of Teachers of Yoruba Language and Culture of Nigeria were purposively selected for the study. A researcher-developed open- and closed-ended questionnaire was used to gather data. The instrument was validated by two mother-tongue education experts and two experts in educational test, measurement, and evaluation. In contrast, its reliability was tested using the split-half procedure, yielding a correlation coefficient of .84, indicating high reliability. The data collected were analysed using mean ranking and standard deviation. The study's findings revealed that the main challenges to the effective implementation of the MTE policy in the geopolitical zone include inadequate teacher training, a lack of appropriate mother-tongue textbooks, financial constraints, ineffective monitoring, limited vocabulary for scientific and technical terms, and mismatched teacher specialization, among others. The study highlights the importance of adequate teacher training in the mother tongue, the provision of instructional materials, financial investment, timely monitoring by relevant authorities, and linguistic standardisation.