EFL Ministerial Primary School Textbooks: Do They Promote Quality Education in Chilean Public Schools?

Considering the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to foster quality education, curricula should encompass inclusive, equitable and contextually meaningful education. Since the textbook is the main support for EFL teaching in Chile, this study examines the alignment between 1st to 4th-grade English language textbooks and the unofficial Chilean English school curriculum. The research questions are as follows: (1) What content do the 1st to 4th-grade English language textbooks build? (2) To what extent does the content align with the unofficial curriculum for the first cycle of primary education? This is relevant since Chile has not improved proficiency in English despite substantial public investment in textbooks. To answer these questions, pedagogic discourse analysis was conducted, framed methodologically and analytically within the register model of Systemic Functional Linguistics, focusing on the field. The corpus comprises the textbooks and the vocabulary to certify young learners’ proficiency (pre-A1 and A1), as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The analysis reveals content building consistency across the textbooks and curriculum alignment, which ensures equitable access to quality learning opportunities.