Language Varieties and Educational Achievement of Indigenous Primary School Pupils

Abstract

This paper explores the relations between standard-language and arithmetic test performance and a range of language-related family characteristics in the Netherlands. The sample consists of 7730 pupils from nearly 700 primary schools. The variables analysed are: the language variety the child chooses in conversations with its father, mother, siblings and friends; the language the parents communicate in; the importance the parents attach to their home language; the parents' command of standard-Dutch; the parents' educational level; the child's gender; the province. The main question is whether pupils who use standard-Dutch perform better than pupils who generally speak another language variety, i.e. a Dutch dialect or Frisian. The results show that only the parents' educational level and the province are relevant in explaining differences in standard-Dutch and arithmetic test results. Most remarkable are the results from Limburg and Friesland. On average the children from both provinces speak non-Dutch in 47% of the language domains. Yet the pupils from Limburg perform best and the pupils from Friesland worst on the standard-Dutch and arithmetic test, even after controlling for the family characteristics. Within these groups there are no differences between the pupils who generally speak Dutch and the pupils who generally speak a Limburg dialect or Frisian.