Globalised discourses within and around spaces for multilingualism: Prospects for education policy change in Vanuatu

This paper examines the way language-in-education policymaking in Vanuatu has dealt with multilingualism at three points in the nation’s short history: in 1980, as the country gained its independence from Britain and France; in 1999, during a period of intense change across government departments following the Comprehensive Reform Programme; and in 2010, as Vanuatu looked back on thirty years of independence. At each of these points in time, analysis of key policy texts reveals traces of globalised discourses of, respectively, the rejection of colonialism, the effectiveness of mother tongue education, and plurilingualism. Each of these discourses might appear to open up space for multilingual education and yet the outcome appears to be the same on each occasion, as the former colonial languages continue to dominate. This paper examines the wider contexts within which these three episodes in Vanuatu’s language-in-education policy chronicle were situated. Analysis of the socio-economic and historico-political contexts within which each policy text was produced reveals that the legacy of the dual colonial period remains a barrier in the way of an education system that is appropriate in and for multilingual Vanuatu