Reports of detailed evaluation of educational programs using pidgins and creoles are difficult to find. But here is a summary of what is available.

Haiti

In the article by Alain Bentolila, mentioned on page 2 above, the results of evaluations done in Haiti are described (page 82):

Those who have been ingenuous enough to believe that a decree would suffice to give Creole the status of oral and written instruction, so that the Haitian educational system would be rapidly and significantly improved, have been sorely disappointed. The few evaluations that were made in 1983 and 1984 have shown that linguistic competence in both creole and French has remained mediocre.

According to the article, these negative results have been significantly affected by controversy over the adopted orthography and difficulties teachers encountered in mastering written Haitian Creole. This was partially caused by continuing negative attitudes towards the language.

Seychelles

A more positive evaluation is described by Derek Bickerton in The Carrier Pidgin (Volume 16, no. 3, 1988, page 3) for the use of the creole in the Seychelles:

A systematic evaluation compared the scores of the 1986 grade 6 (the last class prior to the introduction of Seselwa as the medium of instruction) with those of the 1987 grade 6, first to be taught through Seselwa. Scores were about even on English, on French, the 1987 class showed a gain of 12 percentage points, on math of four, on science of seven, and on social studies of nearly 11. The prediction by the enemies of creole, that education in creole would lower scores in English and French, has failed to be borne out.

Hawai‘i

With regard to Hawai’i Creole English, research has shown that the use of discourse strategies and participation structures in the Kamehameha Early Education Program (mentioned above) have fostered increased reading achievement and development of spoken Standard English. (See the articles listed on page 3 above by Sato, Au and Mason, and Speidel.)

Australia

By far the most rigourous evaluation of an educational program using a pidgin or creole has been done on the use of Kriol in the bilingual program at Barunga, described above. Edward J. Murtagh, then a student at Stanford University, did research on the program for his 1979 PhD dissertation. Later he published an article entitled “Creole and English used as languages of instruction in bilingual education with Aboriginal Australians: some research findings” in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language (Volume 36, 1982, pages 15-33). The purpose of his study was “to find out whether or not a bilingual program which uses Creole and English as languages of instruction facilitates the learning of both Standard English and Creole” (p.15).

Murtagh compared several measures of oral language proficiency in Kriol and English of grade students in the first three grades at two different schools: the Kriol/English bilingual school at Barunga (Bamyili) and an English-only school at Beswick Reserve, where the children are also Kriol speakers. The overall results were that students at the bilingual school scored significantly better than those at the monolingual school, especially in the grade 3. Murtagh concludes (p. 30):

The results of the study indicate very definite trends towards the superiority of bilingual schooling over monolingual schooling for Creole-speaking students with regard to oral language proficiency in both the mother tongue, Creole, and the second language, English.

He attributes these results to the bilingual school students’ “progressively greater success at separating the two languages” resulting from “the two languages being taught as separate entities in the classroom”. This, he says, “constitutes a powerful argument for the introduction of bilingual education to other schools where similar conditions obtain.”

However, according to social and cultural criteria, the program appears to be less successful. Most Aboriginal communities see bilingual programs as a means of maintaining traditional languages and cultures and have chosen to use a traditional Aboriginal language, even where Kriol is the mother tongue of the vast majority of the children. At Yiyili, for example, Gooniyandi is taught even though it is spoken only by old people. At Barunga, many people are not happy with only Kriol and English being taught in the schools and want traditional languages taught as well, even though this would be more of a language revival than a language maintenance program (This information comes from the Northern Territory Department of Education accreditation report mentioned on page 3 above.)