Pearson English language program was implemented in 38 schools on a trial basis during the past six months. According to the initial assessment of the students before the test, 29% the level of English was reached to 47% by the end of the spring, an improvement of about 20 percent.
Therefore, it has been decided to enroll about 140,000 students of grades V-VI of all state-owned secondary schools in this school year. In the future, in the 2024-2025 academic year, the "Pearson English" program will be implemented in grades III-IV, grades VII-VIII, and nationally in 2025-2026.
Pearson English language program launch event was held on the 8th of September in Ulaanbaatar. We had interview with Mr. Mike Mayor, Senior Director of "Global Scale of English" within Pearson English.
- What exactly is the Pearson curriculum?
- On 8th of September, at the launch event for the Pearson Curriculum I talked a little bit about the Common European Framework of Reference. This is a European framework that was developed in the 1990s and published in 2001. It has since been used to inform the teaching and learning of languages in Europe and has been used a lot for English language learning around the world. But it's quite high level and teachers found it quite difficult to implement. So, we developed the Pearson framework of learning objectives of goals called the Global Scale of English. That's the project that I've worked on for ten years.
It basically starts with the Common European Framework but then extends it to include a wider range of learners: very young learners (aged 3-5) young learners at primary and lower secondary school, adults learning general English, academic English, and business English.
So that's the kind of starting point, the framework of these learning objectives. And then from there we then help ministries, institutions, universities, and schools to develop a curriculum based on the needs and the goals of the learners. Each curriculum will be a little bit different depending on the goals of the learners. And then we create course books based on the same GSE framework of learning objectives which enable teachers to teach the curriculum in a relatively straight forward way.
- Pearson curriculum has now been implemented in Mongolia. So did Pearson evaluate or take any survey about the Mongolian education system before the implementation?
- Yes, we had lots of input from the ministry and from local representatives in what we would call needs analysis. What do you need in Mongolia? What's the current situation? What's the current level of English in Mongolia? As you heard from my talk , generally, the level is quite low. We also looked at the teaching methodologies, how is English being taught in the schools? And then the Ministry sets some goals around what they want to achieve by the end of high school. And then from that, we do something called backward design. So, we start from where we want to get to, and look at where we're starting. And then we design backwards so that we can take the students on that journey up to the B1 level, which is what the Ministry has asked for. But the Ministry also had two other requirements.
Other thing that is very forward-thinking of this ministry and something we're seeing it a little bit in other countries around the world, but not enough.
One was around digital literacy. So, making Mongolian students comfortable with technology, recognizing the need for the skills that they will need after education. Then we needed to find products and a curriculum that integrated technology. So mobile phones and computers, enabling students to do additional work outside of the classroom. That was the first thing. And then the other thing that is very forward-thinking of this ministry and something we're seeing it a little bit in other countries around the world, but not enough. And that is that learners need to master a set of skills called “power skills” or “soft skills”, sometimes also called “future skills” which are collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication.
The Ministry was very clear that they wanted these skills integrated into the curriculum for Mongolia, which is great. And we’ve started doing that at Pearson too, incorporating these skills into the English course books as one of the best ways to prepare students to have those skills when they go to apply for a job. We need to raise the profile of these skills. So that students know what they are. They know what they mean. They know what good collaboration looks like. So to answer your question, we at Pearson created the curriculum, but very much in collaboration with the ministry and local informants.
- Please speak a little about Pearson’s previous experience in other countries.
- Yeah, so we've worked a lot with ministries of education and institutions around the world. My role is global, so I spend a lot of time traveling the world to meet with ministries and academic leads of institutions. So, for institutions, we've worked in Japan, Vietnam, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Brazil, North America, and obviously in Europe in countries like Spain and Italy, helping them to develop a curriculum for their institution.
And then at a ministry level, we developed a few years ago the national curriculum for Panama. Unfortunately, the government changed after we developed the national curriculum and as is the case in most countries, a new government puts what the previous administration did aside. And so now we're just starting on a proposal to develop the new curriculum for Panama. We've got some other opportunities in other countries that are just at the early stages for developing the school curriculum.
- Next year, parliamentary elections will be held in Mongolia. If a new party is elected to power, do you think we could have a similar situation as in Panama?
- I guess that’s part of the risk of working with ministries of education. They do change, ministers change. I understand that in Mongolia, maybe the government party itself will not change. In Panama, it went to the opposition. So, it was a completely different set of politics. If it's a different set of politics, then we run the risk of the next government wanting to do something different. I mean, we hope not. And I think what we're doing to try to mitigate that happening, and you'll have seen from the results that were published, that you can already see some progress in the level of English of the students and the engagement of the students and the approach to teaching that is having a positive impact.
So hopefully those schools which are starting to implement the Pearson curriculum and Pearson courseware will continue to do so, even after the election. When a new government is elected, they have a lot to do when you start. So generally, for the first year or two years, they don't do anything major. So that's the hope, but it is a risk.
- Many parents and members of parliament are divided on the issue of whether or not children should learn English at an early age. What do you think?
- So I think there’s some truth in both arguments. Governments increasingly introduce English into the curriculum at a younger age in the belief that you can only learn another language if you start young. Okay, technically that is not true. You don't have to start at three years old or five years old to achieve a high level in English. That is an urban myth. It's not true. The research says you can start later and still achieve a good level of English. However, there is some evidence that if you start younger, you're really training the ear, so maybe the pronunciation would get better.
There is no strong evidence to say you shouldn't introduce it early.
Another argument for starting younger is the fact that If you start younger, you have more years of learning before you get to high school or by the time you're graduating, so you've had more English. So, the number of hours of English that you have obviously had has an impact. So that would favor starting younger and younger. But if the people who are starting younger and younger are concerned that they need to focus on learning Mongolian at a young age and worry about other languages later, I think there's enough research out there now to say, actually, you're not confusing the brain, it will be fine. It's obviously a worry for parents who are bringing children up bilingually. Children may appear to mix and confuse the languages when they're very young. But it all sorts out in time. So there is no strong evidence to say you shouldn't introduce it early.
- What about the teachers’ skills in delivering the curriculum? Currently we have complicated issues in Mongolia about lack of teachers and their salary, their skills etc.,
- The problem is not unique to Mongolia. Trust me, we get the same questions in every country around the world. Ministries introduce English, more hours of English, and at a younger age. As a result, there aren't enough English teachers in the country to meet the demand. People who are not very high level in English suddenly have to start teaching English and it's a problem. And when the launch event I said to the audience, having a great curriculum is important, having great materials is important. But the biggest factor in learning is the teacher. So, the responsibility is on the teacher. And so the Mongolian government is investing in teacher development and certainly the support that we give in our course books helps to ensure that the curriculum is delivery as effectively as possible. So every course book comes with teachers books with lots of ideas on how to run communicative activities in the classroom. So for the less experienced teachers, there is a lot of support in the materials we create. But you're right, ultimately a big investment needs to be made in teacher development and it's got to be ongoing. It's not that you do teacher training and then you don't do any more training. It has to be constant.
We have to train teachers to be more comfortable, to have alternatives.
A lot of teachers aren't comfortable with technology, right? So they need to learn how we teach using technology in an effective way, how we use it in the classroom, how we use it at home. A lot of teachers, I don't know if it's true in Mongolia, but a lot of teachers are nervous about using technology in the classroom because sometimes technology goes wrong and, for example, they can't get the video to play in the classroom. So they're like, I don't want to risk that. We have to train them to be more comfortable, to have alternatives. And you get that in our teachers’ books. Like if you want to do it this way, do it this way. If you want to do it that way, do it that way.
- You talked about four skills which will be useful for in the future. Tell us more about that, please.
- Yeah, those skills are critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. At Pearson we actually have seven. So, I only talked about four skill. But there's also social responsibility, self-management, so managing your time and managing your emotions. And then leadership skills.
- I'm curious about the budget for this implementation?
- I don't know about the financial side. I think it is a big investment. My understanding is that the books are bought by the government and then free for the students. So, the ministry is investing because the other thing that we see around the world, and I'm sure it's true here in Mongolia, is there is a big disparity between those families that can afford private education for their children and those families who can't. And so, we tend to see a higher level of English in private schools compared to public schools. And obviously that's not right. It shouldn't depend on how much money your family has. So, I think the government investing in products and services to reduce this gap in equity and education - that's important.
Currently, Mongolia is number 72 in the ranking of countries according to proficiency levels in English. So, Mongolia is considered “low proficiency”.
- What are you expecting from after the implementation of the Pearson curriculum in Mongolia?
- We're at the very beginning of the journey in Mongolia. There's already been a pilot with some very promising results. My team has currently developed two grade levels, 5-6. We've still got all the other grade levels to develop, and then we want to monitor the progress that the students are making. And I don't know if you talk about agile development in Mongolia, but we need to then adapt the curriculum in an agile way, based on the results and data we collect. It’s an ongoing process. We're continuing with the piloting and the testing, seeing if it is working? If it's not working, why isn't it working? How do we repair it? How do we fix it? A bit like good teaching. Like, you look to see what's happening and then if there's a problem, you don't just carry on blindly. You look and change things.
Currently, Mongolia is number 72 in the ranking of countries according to proficiency levels in English. So, Mongolia is considered “low proficiency”. My hope is that we move from the low proficiency into the intermediate proficiency in the next few years. So that you are on a par with China or some of the other trading partners who are a bit higher in the ranking.
- Thank you for your time.
Pearson English language program was implemented in 38 schools on a trial basis during the past six months. According to the initial assessment of the students before the test, 29% the level of English was reached to 47% by the end of the spring, an improvement of about 20 percent.
Therefore, it has been decided to enroll about 140,000 students of grades V-VI of all state-owned secondary schools in this school year. In the future, in the 2024-2025 academic year, the "Pearson English" program will be implemented in grades III-IV, grades VII-VIII, and nationally in 2025-2026.
Pearson English language program launch event was held on the 8th of September in Ulaanbaatar. We had interview with Mr. Mike Mayor, Senior Director of "Global Scale of English" within Pearson English.
- What exactly is the Pearson curriculum?
- On 8th of September, at the launch event for the Pearson Curriculum I talked a little bit about the Common European Framework of Reference. This is a European framework that was developed in the 1990s and published in 2001. It has since been used to inform the teaching and learning of languages in Europe and has been used a lot for English language learning around the world. But it's quite high level and teachers found it quite difficult to implement. So, we developed the Pearson framework of learning objectives of goals called the Global Scale of English. That's the project that I've worked on for ten years.
It basically starts with the Common European Framework but then extends it to include a wider range of learners: very young learners (aged 3-5) young learners at primary and lower secondary school, adults learning general English, academic English, and business English.
So that's the kind of starting point, the framework of these learning objectives. And then from there we then help ministries, institutions, universities, and schools to develop a curriculum based on the needs and the goals of the learners. Each curriculum will be a little bit different depending on the goals of the learners. And then we create course books based on the same GSE framework of learning objectives which enable teachers to teach the curriculum in a relatively straight forward way.
- Pearson curriculum has now been implemented in Mongolia. So did Pearson evaluate or take any survey about the Mongolian education system before the implementation?
- Yes, we had lots of input from the ministry and from local representatives in what we would call needs analysis. What do you need in Mongolia? What's the current situation? What's the current level of English in Mongolia? As you heard from my talk , generally, the level is quite low. We also looked at the teaching methodologies, how is English being taught in the schools? And then the Ministry sets some goals around what they want to achieve by the end of high school. And then from that, we do something called backward design. So, we start from where we want to get to, and look at where we're starting. And then we design backwards so that we can take the students on that journey up to the B1 level, which is what the Ministry has asked for. But the Ministry also had two other requirements.
Other thing that is very forward-thinking of this ministry and something we're seeing it a little bit in other countries around the world, but not enough.
One was around digital literacy. So, making Mongolian students comfortable with technology, recognizing the need for the skills that they will need after education. Then we needed to find products and a curriculum that integrated technology. So mobile phones and computers, enabling students to do additional work outside of the classroom. That was the first thing. And then the other thing that is very forward-thinking of this ministry and something we're seeing it a little bit in other countries around the world, but not enough. And that is that learners need to master a set of skills called “power skills” or “soft skills”, sometimes also called “future skills” which are collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication.
The Ministry was very clear that they wanted these skills integrated into the curriculum for Mongolia, which is great. And we’ve started doing that at Pearson too, incorporating these skills into the English course books as one of the best ways to prepare students to have those skills when they go to apply for a job. We need to raise the profile of these skills. So that students know what they are. They know what they mean. They know what good collaboration looks like. So to answer your question, we at Pearson created the curriculum, but very much in collaboration with the ministry and local informants.
- Please speak a little about Pearson’s previous experience in other countries.
- Yeah, so we've worked a lot with ministries of education and institutions around the world. My role is global, so I spend a lot of time traveling the world to meet with ministries and academic leads of institutions. So, for institutions, we've worked in Japan, Vietnam, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Brazil, North America, and obviously in Europe in countries like Spain and Italy, helping them to develop a curriculum for their institution.
And then at a ministry level, we developed a few years ago the national curriculum for Panama. Unfortunately, the government changed after we developed the national curriculum and as is the case in most countries, a new government puts what the previous administration did aside. And so now we're just starting on a proposal to develop the new curriculum for Panama. We've got some other opportunities in other countries that are just at the early stages for developing the school curriculum.
- Next year, parliamentary elections will be held in Mongolia. If a new party is elected to power, do you think we could have a similar situation as in Panama?
- I guess that’s part of the risk of working with ministries of education. They do change, ministers change. I understand that in Mongolia, maybe the government party itself will not change. In Panama, it went to the opposition. So, it was a completely different set of politics. If it's a different set of politics, then we run the risk of the next government wanting to do something different. I mean, we hope not. And I think what we're doing to try to mitigate that happening, and you'll have seen from the results that were published, that you can already see some progress in the level of English of the students and the engagement of the students and the approach to teaching that is having a positive impact.
So hopefully those schools which are starting to implement the Pearson curriculum and Pearson courseware will continue to do so, even after the election. When a new government is elected, they have a lot to do when you start. So generally, for the first year or two years, they don't do anything major. So that's the hope, but it is a risk.
- Many parents and members of parliament are divided on the issue of whether or not children should learn English at an early age. What do you think?
- So I think there’s some truth in both arguments. Governments increasingly introduce English into the curriculum at a younger age in the belief that you can only learn another language if you start young. Okay, technically that is not true. You don't have to start at three years old or five years old to achieve a high level in English. That is an urban myth. It's not true. The research says you can start later and still achieve a good level of English. However, there is some evidence that if you start younger, you're really training the ear, so maybe the pronunciation would get better.
There is no strong evidence to say you shouldn't introduce it early.
Another argument for starting younger is the fact that If you start younger, you have more years of learning before you get to high school or by the time you're graduating, so you've had more English. So, the number of hours of English that you have obviously had has an impact. So that would favor starting younger and younger. But if the people who are starting younger and younger are concerned that they need to focus on learning Mongolian at a young age and worry about other languages later, I think there's enough research out there now to say, actually, you're not confusing the brain, it will be fine. It's obviously a worry for parents who are bringing children up bilingually. Children may appear to mix and confuse the languages when they're very young. But it all sorts out in time. So there is no strong evidence to say you shouldn't introduce it early.
- What about the teachers’ skills in delivering the curriculum? Currently we have complicated issues in Mongolia about lack of teachers and their salary, their skills etc.,
- The problem is not unique to Mongolia. Trust me, we get the same questions in every country around the world. Ministries introduce English, more hours of English, and at a younger age. As a result, there aren't enough English teachers in the country to meet the demand. People who are not very high level in English suddenly have to start teaching English and it's a problem. And when the launch event I said to the audience, having a great curriculum is important, having great materials is important. But the biggest factor in learning is the teacher. So, the responsibility is on the teacher. And so the Mongolian government is investing in teacher development and certainly the support that we give in our course books helps to ensure that the curriculum is delivery as effectively as possible. So every course book comes with teachers books with lots of ideas on how to run communicative activities in the classroom. So for the less experienced teachers, there is a lot of support in the materials we create. But you're right, ultimately a big investment needs to be made in teacher development and it's got to be ongoing. It's not that you do teacher training and then you don't do any more training. It has to be constant.
We have to train teachers to be more comfortable, to have alternatives.
A lot of teachers aren't comfortable with technology, right? So they need to learn how we teach using technology in an effective way, how we use it in the classroom, how we use it at home. A lot of teachers, I don't know if it's true in Mongolia, but a lot of teachers are nervous about using technology in the classroom because sometimes technology goes wrong and, for example, they can't get the video to play in the classroom. So they're like, I don't want to risk that. We have to train them to be more comfortable, to have alternatives. And you get that in our teachers’ books. Like if you want to do it this way, do it this way. If you want to do it that way, do it that way.
- You talked about four skills which will be useful for in the future. Tell us more about that, please.
- Yeah, those skills are critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. At Pearson we actually have seven. So, I only talked about four skill. But there's also social responsibility, self-management, so managing your time and managing your emotions. And then leadership skills.
- I'm curious about the budget for this implementation?
- I don't know about the financial side. I think it is a big investment. My understanding is that the books are bought by the government and then free for the students. So, the ministry is investing because the other thing that we see around the world, and I'm sure it's true here in Mongolia, is there is a big disparity between those families that can afford private education for their children and those families who can't. And so, we tend to see a higher level of English in private schools compared to public schools. And obviously that's not right. It shouldn't depend on how much money your family has. So, I think the government investing in products and services to reduce this gap in equity and education - that's important.
Currently, Mongolia is number 72 in the ranking of countries according to proficiency levels in English. So, Mongolia is considered “low proficiency”.
- What are you expecting from after the implementation of the Pearson curriculum in Mongolia?
- We're at the very beginning of the journey in Mongolia. There's already been a pilot with some very promising results. My team has currently developed two grade levels, 5-6. We've still got all the other grade levels to develop, and then we want to monitor the progress that the students are making. And I don't know if you talk about agile development in Mongolia, but we need to then adapt the curriculum in an agile way, based on the results and data we collect. It’s an ongoing process. We're continuing with the piloting and the testing, seeing if it is working? If it's not working, why isn't it working? How do we repair it? How do we fix it? A bit like good teaching. Like, you look to see what's happening and then if there's a problem, you don't just carry on blindly. You look and change things.
Currently, Mongolia is number 72 in the ranking of countries according to proficiency levels in English. So, Mongolia is considered “low proficiency”. My hope is that we move from the low proficiency into the intermediate proficiency in the next few years. So that you are on a par with China or some of the other trading partners who are a bit higher in the ranking.
- Thank you for your time.