Mother tongue and learning: A synthesis of evidence to inform education policy

The brief narratively synthesizes evidence from a systematic review and several rigorous impact evaluations on how mother-tongue instruction affects foundational learning, school progression and equity in multilingual contexts, and on the implementation conditions that determine whether language policies deliver. The Government of Benin requested it through the Ministry of Preschool and Primary Education, and 3ie's WACIE Helpdesk prepared it under the West Africa Capacity-building and Impact Evaluation (WACIE) programme.