Mother Tongue and School Failure in Multilingual Country

Abstract

Spain is a multilingual country where three additional official languages coexist (Catalan, Basque and Galician) with the state language (Spanish). The high costs of translation impose that policy makers are permanent negotiating which percentage of information should be provided in each language. Against this background, the language in the field of education is a controversial topic. In this research we focus on how students´ mother tongue, as an ethnic attribute, determines their school performance. Our results confirm that there is a premium for those students whose mother tongue is Catalan, and that living in those communities where Basque and Galician are spoken, affects also positively the academic performance.