"How does language exposure at home affect early reading outcomes in the Kenyan context?"

About the Seminar

In this paper, the effect of receiving instruction in a maternal language on early reading skills acquisition among grade 2 pupils in Kenya is examined. We explore to what extent the pupil’s maternal language affects literacy scores by comparing achievement for pupils who are differently exposed to the language of instruction (i.e. Kiswahili) in their home environment. To address this issue, we focus on a dataset from Kenya that offers the opportunity to compare pupils who belong to the same schools but have different maternal languages.
 
Three groups of interest with different exposure to Kiswahili in the family environment are identified: pupils whose maternal language is Kiswahili; pupils who speak several maternal languages at home including Kiswahili and pupils who never speak Kiswahili at home (i.e. Kiswahili is not their maternal language). The determinants of literacy outcomes and the effect of language on educational attainment is modeled using the education production function with school fixed effects. After controlling for individual factors and school observables and non-observables, we find that pupils whose maternal language is not Kiswahili score .211 standard deviation lower on the Kiswahili literacy score than pupils who speak Kiswahili at home. The effect on the English score is .245 standard deviation lower. These results confirm a global discriminatory effect of receiving instruction in a language pupils have never been exposed to, i.e a language that differs from their maternal language.

About the Presenter
                                                                                                                               

 Julie Berthet Valdois is a Ph.D. Economics candidate at the   University of Cape Town (UCT). She holds a Masters of   Research in International Economics and Development   from Paris-Dauphine University. She spent 5+ years   working in the area of Monitoring and Evaluation for health   and education projects in Africa.

Her expertise includes technical assistance for monitoring and evaluation systems, large-scale impact evaluations including: research design and tools, implementation, training workshop, data entry management, data cleaning, data analysis and results dissemination. Currently, she is working part-time with the ETCP project as a Research Officer. Her research interests include economics of education, health economics and the economics of tobacco control.


Date: Wednesday, 5 December 2018
Lunch: 12h30 - 13h00, Staff Lounge, 4th Floor, School of Economics, Middle Campus
Seminar: 13h00 - 14h00, Seminar Room, 4th Floor, School of Economics, Middle Campus