Students’ Clarity of Conceptual Understanding and Medium of Instruction in the Biology Subject at Secondary School Level in the Hyderabad District

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The language in which students are taught holds the key to their educational experiences and academic outcomes. This is perhaps the central issue in our educational system at every level. In the last 10 years, the language of instruction in our schools has seen a shift from Urdu to English at an unprecedented rate. The National Education Policy 2007 of Pakistan preferred Urdu over English. But in 2010, the Supreme Court made it compulsory for the federal government to adopt English as the medium of instruction and first language in addition to Urdu, which is the national language. The push for English-medium schools claims that mother tongue-based schools are not effective in producing universally competent students. Statistical analyses, including ANOVA and an independent two-tailed t-test, were conducted. The ANOVA results were significant at an alpha level of 0.05, F(2, 187) = 42.55, p < .001, indicating that the medium of instruction has a significant effect on student performance. The t-test further reinforced this, showing a significant mean score difference between students taught in their mother tongue versus a non-mother tongue, t(188) = 9.042, p < .001.The study concludes that students who learned Biology in their mother tongue exhibited superior conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills, outperforming their peers taught in a non-mother tongue by approximately 45.74%. These findings offer vital insights for educational policymakers and practitioners, advocating for the use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction to enhance cognitive capacity and academic achievement.