Introduction

While not ubiquitous, some language policies are increasingly being introduced globally to address educational concerns surrounding equality and equity (^{Cardona-Escobar et al., 2021}; ^{Murray, 2020}). While both state and national governments create macro-level policy frameworks, these are operationalized by local actors who turn these macro-policies into practices that align with their context’s needs (^{Vanbuel & Van den Branden, 2021}). Research suggests that teachers interpret, contextualize, or enact language policies (^{Ball et al., 2012}) based on their experiences, ideologies, and agency (^{Hornberger & Johnson, 2011}; ^{Zuniga et al., 2018}). Many national language policies in countries where English is primarily taught as a foreign language aim to reform English learning by providing increased opportunities to learn English in primary school classrooms (^{Cardona-Escobar et al., 2021}; ^{Nguyen, 2011}; ^{Qi, 2016}). It is argued that creating opportunities for learning English or developing language capital equips young people for the 21^st century (^{Ministerio de Educación Nacional [MEN], 2016}; ^{Murray, 2020}).

In Colombia, most of the objectives and goals of English language policies have been defined concerning English language proficiency for both students and teachers. These policies have been primarily designed to graduate high school students with a B1 proficiency level in English (according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, CEFRL) and high school teachers achieving a B2 proficiency level alongside the appropriate knowledge to teach the language. However, these goals have remained elusive. This has served as a justification for designing new language policies (^{Bastidas, 2017}; ^{Cadavid Múnera et al., 2004}; ^{McNulty Ferri & Usma Wilches, 2005}; ^{Usma, 2009a}).

Another common thread of Colombian language policies is the homogenization of school curricula, teachers’ methodologies, and assessment practices, which not only challenges schools’ and teachers’ autonomy but also produces technologies of accountability. As some of the language policies have been driven by different political agendas rather than by a needs analysis of the English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) community (^{Gómez Sará, 2017}; ^{Usma, 2009a}, ^2009b), some reforms of the last decade overlap. Additionally, most decisions have been made with a top-down approach, in which the MEN and international institutions have focused on ideal planning, ignoring the contextualized reality of EFL public instruction.

In Colombia and elsewhere (^{Barnes, 2021}; ^{Cardona-Escobar et al., 2021}; ^{Qi, 2016}), EFL policies have focused on increasing English learning opportunities for young people. One of the National Bilingual Program (PNB, in Spanish) policy texts, Colombia’s current English language policy, outlines that one of its goals is to improve:

the coverage and quality of the educational system . . . so that Colombia gets closer to high international standards and achieves equality of opportunities for all citizens. . . . The Suggested Curriculum of English for Kindergarten and Primary School is a concrete element that aims to achieve equality of opportunities. (^{MEN, 2016}, p. 35, emphasis in original, translated from Spanish)

Thus, this paper explores the enactment of the PNB in three public schools, particularly examining how the program aspires for all children to have the same opportunities. To achieve this, we must understand how schools and teachers enact policy, mainly how the English language is employed, understood, and promoted within language classrooms.

Foreign Language Exposure and Use in the Classroom

Scholars have argued that language proficiency is influenced by exposure to the language (^{De Wilde et al., 2020}; ^{Fhlannchadha & Hickey, 2019}) and students’ active use of the language within the classroom (^{Thomas & Roberts, 2011}); students are given increased opportunities to learn the target language if they have increased exposure and opportunities to use it inside the classroom. In a Spanish-English bilingual program in a U.S. school, ^{Ballinger and Lyster (2011)} found that while students tended to speak with peers in English, their teacher’s language choice shaped their decision to use English or Spanish. Teachers’ and students’ use of their L1 and L2 in the classroom was influenced by teachers’ beliefs about language and language learning (^{Barnes, 2021}; ^{Mellom et al., 2018}; ^{Zuniga et al., 2018}) and their perceptions of their proficiency in the target language (^{Van Canh & Renandya, 2017}).

Teachers’ beliefs and experiences with language learning can impact their views on how L1 and L2 should be considered and used within classrooms. Many scholars argue that teaching and learning can be influenced by the belief that communication is most effective when only one dominant language is employed (^{Budach, 2013}; ^{Vanbuel & Van den Branden, 2021}). Such ideologies are often shaped by teachers’ monolingual biases (^{Barnes, 2021}; ^{Mellom et al., 2018}). While it is widely agreed that L1 should never be excluded from language classrooms, the percentage of language use between L1 and L2 can vary and depends on teachers’ perceptions of students’ L2 proficiency levels (^{Budach, 2013}). Teachers tend to primarily use students’ L1 for instructional and classroom activities if they feel the students have limited L2 proficiency. Further empirical evidence suggests that teachers’ L2 proficiency influences their active use of L2, with teachers with less confidence in using L2, utilizing it less for instruction (^{Van Canh & Renandya, 2017}).

Current English Language Policy Landscape in Colombia

The PNB initiative was issued in 2014, and its aims were defined in terms of English language proficiency achievement, which is based on levels (A1-A2 = basic user, B1-B2 = independent user, and C1-C2 = proficient user) established by the CEFRL scale (^{Council of Europe, 2001}). The policy states that students should achieve an A1 proficiency level by the end of primary education. Within the policy, the government committed itself to ensuring that Colombia would be the most educated country in Latin America by 2025. Based on this goal, a study was conducted in 2014 by the Ministry of Education and a U.S. firm to highlight the challenges of English language instruction and learning in Colombia (^{MEN, 2014}). Some of the difficulties that the MEN found included the English language proficiency of teachers and students. According to the report, 54% of high school graduates had the English proficiency level of someone who has never been exposed to the language. A new program was released in 2015 to strengthen the policy of the PNB: the Programa Nacional de Inglés (National Program of English; ^{MEN, 2014}).

The PNB included a set of comprehensive guidelines that included the what to teach, the how to teach, and the why to teach of EFL public education, from kindergarten to Grade 11. Although the guidelines were labeled as “suggested,” it was expected that all public schools would adopt or adapt them in their EFL planning and instruction (^{MEN, 2016}). The policy guidelines highlighted the intricacies in which the documents play a role in how the policy was enacted in different schools.

Researchers and stakeholders have criticized the PNB. For instance, ^{Ayala Zárate and Álvarez (2005)} criticized the adoption of the CEFR since “not all Colombian schools have the same physical resources [as in Europe], technology, human resources, and enough governmental economic investment” (p. 15). ^{Sánchez Solarte and Obando Guerrero (2008)} also disapproved of standards development without schoolteachers’ participation. They indicated that Colombian schools devoted, on average, only two hours of English instruction weekly, in which students were not all the time exposed to the language, creating unfavorable scenarios for developing English language competences. Finally, teachers’ proficiency continued to be a limitation, as MEN found out in a diagnostic test where 63% of English language teachers in Bogota still had a basic proficiency level (A1-A2), and only 14% had an advanced level (C1-C2) (^{Sánchez Solarte & Obando Guerrero, 2008}, p. 191). Researchers even criticized the limited definition of “bilingualism” to the Spanish-English notion (de Zarate, 2007, as cited in ^{Usma, 2009a}).

Two objectives of the PNB are of immediate interest to the present study. First, the reform is framed within the general goal of “promoting educational equality and mak[ing] English language teaching and learning seen as a strengthening tool for the education of 21^st-century Colombian students” (^{MEN, 2016}, p. 7). Second, they set as one of their purposes to “ensure . . . an equitable treatment for all the population exposed to exclusion, poverty, and the effects of inequality” (^{MEN, 2016}, p. 26, emphasis in original).

Although various studies in Colombia have critically reviewed the enactment of the PNB (^{Benavides, 2021}; ^{Bonilla Carvajal & Tejada-Sanchez, 2016}; ^{Valencia, 2013}), the current research study is, to our knowledge, the first study that focuses explicitly on the equality and equity gaps the policy attempts to address.

Capital Building

This study draws upon ^{Bourdieu’s (2006)} concept of capital, defined as the intertwined connections between an individual’s cultural values, social networks, economic resources, and social conditions. Capital encompasses the assets individuals possess and value, as shaped by what is valued in the context or field. ^{Bourdieu (1992)} acknowledges language as a form of symbolic capital that provides individuals access to materials and educational opportunities. Individuals enrich other forms of capital by gaining access to resources, education, and employment opportunities through their language capital. It is a cycle in which social agents’ symbolic and language capital (English and Spanish bilingualism, in this case) give them access to economic means that individuals use, successively, to invest in their symbolic and language wealth.

The possession of different types of capital also contributes to the homogenization of social groups in distinctive classes (^{Moore, 2008}). Framed by this conceptualization, learning English as an international language is recognized socially in Colombia by its cultural and symbolic value and the economic prospects it potentially provides (^{MEN, 2014}). Learning English is socially perceived as a form of capital by students and teachers, and how it is built through learning opportunities by the participating schools is of central interest to this study.

Previous scholarly work in Colombia has employed Bourdieu’s concept of capital to explore the agency and role of teachers (^{Guerrero-Nieto & Quintero, 2021}), the use of symbolic power to institutionalize discourses around policy (^{Guerrero, 2010}), and critically analyze the ideologies behind EFL policies (^{Valencia, 2013}). We build on these previous studies by employing Bourdieu’s concepts to problematize students’ equal access to language capital when enacting the current EFL policy. Acknowledging that policy is translated, interpreted, and contextualized in various ways in schools (^{Ball et al., 2012}), we explore how Colombia’s current language policy reform—to bridge the equity gap through English language learning—is enacted in public schools. To achieve this, we are guided by one overarching research question and two sub-questions:

How is the National Bilingual Program enacted in three Colombian Grade-5 classrooms?

Research Design

Findings

The findings revealed that inequalities arose from the three distinctive English language schooling approaches which hamper the PNB’s goals that aim to (a) promote equality, (b) make English language teaching and learning the conduit for equipping and developing students for the 21^st century, and (c) ensure that the curriculum provides equitable treatment for all student populations (^{MEN, 2016}). The findings of this study further reveal that equitable access to English language learning opportunities was not equally enacted among the three schools. This prevents English from becoming a “strengthening tool” (^{MEN, 2016}), regardless of the characteristics of the schools that students attend. As a result of a lack of “equitable treatment” (^{MEN, 2016}, p. 26) across schools, there were unequal levels of achievement—one of the critical problems that the new policy attempts to address (^{MEN, 2014}).

Unequal Level of English Achievement Among Grade 5 Students

The Pedagogical Principles and Guidelines of the PNB outline the English language proficiency level that students should develop each school year. According to the document, “Students in Grade 5 should achieve an A1 proficiency level under the CEFR” (^{MEN, 2016}, p. 31). Therefore, in addition to exploring the allocation of time spent in learning and using English within each school program, we wanted to explore the different levels of achievement among students by administering the YLE test. This is significant, as at the time of writing this paper, no existing studies had collected data on the achievement of Colombian primary schools concerning the goals set by the PNB. Although only three classrooms took the test, it sheds light on the different levels of achievement across English language enactments in the country.

Figure 1 shows the percentage of correct answers students scored in each section and the test overall. Rather than a more in-depth statistical analysis, percentages provide an overall picture of the variation in achievement across the schools. We acknowledge that further statistical analysis is required to understand and make sense of the relationships between student achievement, language skills, and school funding structures. Based on the Cambridge website guidelines for interpreting results, four students from Bolivar achieved an A1 proficiency level (the suggested proficiency for fifth graders according to the MEN), and no student from Belgrano or Santander obtained the necessary score to be considered an A1 proficient language learner.

Figure 1 Percentage of Correct Answers in the YLE Test 

Figure 1 corroborates our analyses of the qualitative data in that, despite the aspirational introduction of the national policy to address equality, the three language programs are not the same. Instead, they differ in both the opportunities for language exposure and use and their achievement outcomes.

Figure 1 also shows that the most remarkable differences among schools are listening and speaking, the critical components of spoken interactions and communication. This disparity may be due to differences in exposure to English and opportunities to use it within classrooms. Reading, on the other hand, is the language skill area in which schools performed similarly. Alongside an emphasis on developing students’ English language reading and writing in schools (^{Zabala-Vargas et al., 2019}), another reason might be that when language teachers do not feel confident in their listening and speaking skills, they tend to focus more on developing reading and writing competencies among their students (^{Van Canh & Renandya, 2017}).

This study’s qualitative and quantitative data suggest that the three programs are unequal regarding language exposure, use, or outcomes. Despite the goals of the PNB to promote “educational equality” (^{MEN, 2016}, p. 7) through English language teaching and learning and to provide a curriculum that allows for “equitable treatment” (^{MEN, 2016}, p. 26), we argue that the enactment of the curriculum is shaped more by the funding structures in place (e.g., non-focalized, focalized, and piloting bilingual) than it is by policy guidelines. This is not surprising given that these three schools were purposefully chosen to explore the enactment of three different language programs. However, the findings highlight that because the schools reflected similar socio-economic backgrounds, how they were funded had a powerful impact on how they enacted the PNB rather than the PNB itself.

Discussion

Bilingual policies in education theoretically demand the provision of opportunities for language capital building. These reforms attempt to create spaces where cultural, linguistic, and symbolic assets are transformed and exchanged through intricate networks within and across fields (^{Bourdieu, 1986}). Nevertheless, when schools fall short of providing access to opportunities and spaces to create and exchange language capital, inequalities in language learning and levels of achievement arise between institutions. Moreover, it is possible to determine that access to funding may shape the schools’ ability to provide opportunities and how much time students are exposed to and use English within the classroom. It is agreed that language learning reform should provide teachers with professional development opportunities to gain confidence in their abilities (^{Van Canh & Renandya, 2017}) and help address currently-held beliefs about language and language learning (^{Barnes, 2021}; ^{Budach, 2013}; ^{Mellom et al., 2018}; ^{Zuniga et al., 2018}), given that teachers can create opportune spaces for language learning. This is particularly important as it has been shown that teachers’ language choices influence students’ language use (see ^{Ballinger & Lyster, 2011}) and students’ access to capital-building opportunities (^{De Wilde et al., 2020}; ^{Fhlannchadha & Hickey, 2019}).

Enactments of policy, by nature, result in differing interpretations and implementations of the same policy, mainly due to the diversity of teachers’ beliefs about language and language learning (^{Hornberger & Johnson, 2011}; ^{Zuniga et al., 2018}) and how funding is applied (^{Butler, 2007}; ^{Nguyen, 2011}). Although the PNB aims to provide equal access to English learning and encourages equal outcomes through the homogenization of the curriculum, the methodologies of teachers, and the assessment of students, the current funding structures towards this aspiration raise inequalities of learning opportunities. In many ways, the current funding structures thwart the successful enactment of the curriculum. When access to funding is not configured based on the needs of students, schools, communities, or regions, bilingual policies risk perpetuating learning inequalities. In other words, the distribution of human resources, materials, and learning resources that the PNB proposes ultimately influences unequal outcomes across institutions. Although there are chances for equal access to opportunities, these would need to be provided through needs-based funding and redistribution of human and learning resources, which is non-existent with the current policy.

Although bilingual abilities entail more than language proficiency, such as cognitive organisation (^{Bialystok, 2011}), enhanced executive control (^{Bialystok et al., 2009}), multicultural competencies, and tolerance to ambiguity (^{Dewaele & Wei, 2013}), the MEN largely determines the success of the national language policies in terms of English language proficiency (^{MEN, 2014}). We acknowledge the complexity of bilingual skills, and the administration of the YLE test aimed to provide a general overview of students’ achievement levels and compare it with the policy goals. Notably, despite enjoying more English language learning opportunities than most mainstream schools in Colombia, four students from Bolivar—and no students from the other schools—achieved an A1 proficiency level. The MEN should not only widen its conception of “successful bilingualism” but also the instruments to assess it. If students’ proficiency continues to be considered the primary outcome to evaluate the success of language policies in public schooling, other forms of achievement (e.g., openness to foreigners, tolerance towards difference, multicultural knowledge) might be obscured, and reforms might be perceived as “unsuccessful.”

Conclusion

This study reveals that current funding structures hampered the enactment of the PNB. The study exposed the differentiated enactments of the English language curriculum guidelines and the unequal opportunities for learning and achievement. Moreover, we identified the complexities in language policy enactment. Given that English language learning is a conduit for human capital building (^{MEN, 2016}; ^{Murray, 2020}), providing a set of curriculum guidelines for language instruction is just one step towards equalizing opportunities and achievement among students. There also must be the equal and equitable provision of financial resources to schools if the equality/equity agenda is to be meaningfully addressed.

Despite its contribution to the literature on policy enactment and its entanglement with school funding, this study is limited in scope. While the three participating teachers met the study’s inclusion criteria, the participating students were not recruited based on inclusion or exclusion criteria but because they were students in the participating teachers’ classrooms. In addition, data collection was limited in scope due to being part of a dissertation project. As a result, further research is needed to not only expand the number of participating schools and corroborate and further interrogate the findings of this study but to provide more quantitative analysis on student achievement, examining the relationships between different schools, language skills, and the allocation of language instruction. In addition, future research might consider that some students, institutions, and regions may need more access to language capital than others.