Language in Education Policy in Kenya: What Place for Foreign Languages?

Abstract

The subject of Language-in-education policies has generated rigorous debate and is an issue of concern to education stakeholders and  researchers in education. Despite markedly disparate views, there is an uneasy agreement that for education systems the world over,  languages play a pivotal role in the teaching and learning processes. This paper provides a critical appraisal of the general language- ineducation-policy in Kenya (hereinafter, LiEP). It then briefly and singularly examines foreign languagein-education policies (hereinafter,  FLiEP) around the world and gives a particular focus on the situation of the French language education in Kenya. The paper determines  that foreign language-in-education policies in Kenya’s education system are admittedly silent or not clearly spelt-out. The resultant effect  on foreign language education (hereinafter, FLE) in Kenyan schools is that its growth has not been methodologically planned but have  “self-developed” in response and in line with socio-economic, political and educational transformations in the country. To bring this to  the fore, this paper presents an explanatory research by critically examining Kenya`s LiEP from independence to present, their interpretations and implementations, in reference to foreign language education. Literature informing this paper was sourced from  various documents from library search, online sources and Ministry of Education Kenya documents, that is, Sessional Papers.