The History of Educational Language Policies in Uganda: Lessons from the Past

Prosperous Nankindu^1,

¹Department of Languages and Communication, Kyambogo University, P.O. Box 1 Kampala Uganda

Cite this paper:
Prosperous Nankindu. The History of Educational Language Policies in Uganda: Lessons from the Past. American Journal of Educational Research. 2020; 8(9):643-652. doi: 10.12691/education-8-9-5

Abstract

Education language policies in Uganda are traced way back in 1890’s during the first missionary activities. Since then, Uganda has had several commissions which tried to sort out the issues of language in education. This paper makes a collection and commentary on those commissions. The commissions are presented in different sections in this paper according to the period of occurrence. The sections are: (1) The Colonial Period 1894-1960, (2) The Post World War II Period 1944-1961, (3) The Post-Colonial Period 1963-1988 and (4) The 1989 Kajubi Education Policy Review Commission. In all the debates, arguments were rotating around the use of English only, mother tongue / vernacular only, or both. To date, similar debates are still going on in Uganda. For a multilingual country, the most appropriate language policy in education would be of a multilingual nature.

Keywords:
Uganda language policy language planning

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