MOTHER-TONGUE INSTRUCTION AND FOUNDATIONAL LITERACY AND NUMERACY IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN ZARIA AND SABON-GARI LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS, KADUNA STATE

In November 2025 the Federal Government of Nigeria cancelled the 2022 National Language Policy and restored English as the sole medium of instruction, arguing that mother-tongue teaching had hurt learning outcomes. Rigorous early-grade evidence from the Hausa-speaking north is limited and the debate is contested. The study compared foundational literacy and numeracy of Primary 3 pupils taught mainly in Hausa with those taught mainly in English in Primary 1–3, in Zaria and Sabon-Gari LGAs of Kaduna State. A quasi-experimental non-equivalent-groups design with a baseline covariate was used. 240 pupils in 20 public primary schools (10 Hausa-medium, 10 English-medium; 12 pupils per school) completed adapted early-grade assessments of Hausa letter-sound knowledge, Hausa and English word decoding, Hausa oral reading fluency and numeracy. Analyses used Welch t-tests, ANCOVA with cluster-robust standard errors, school-level tests, intra-class correlations and multiple regression. Baseline equivalence held (p = .305). Adjusted for baseline, Hausa-medium pupils scored higher in Hausa letter-sound knowledge (adjusted difference = 3.2, cluster-robust p = .003), Hausa word decoding (3.7, p = .011), Hausa fluency (4.9, p = .001) and numeracy (4.4, p = .013). English word decoding did not differ (1.3, p = .340). Hausa decoding predicted English decoding after controls (β = .14, p = .022). If field data reproduce this pattern, early instruction in Hausa would carry no measurable English penalty and would improve Hausa literacy and numeracy, which speaks against the claim that mother-tongue instruction lowers learning. Findings on early-grade skills cannot settle claims about later examination results, and the evidence base needs larger cluster-randomised studies.