The bilingual education in the Middle East gets lots of influence from their language Policy. For most researchers, this region hereto couldn't be analyzed owing to the resistance to colonialism and foreign intervention. When it comes to bilingual education, it's not as simple as English-Arabic module, it also involves the models of another minorities languages sets. And when people talk about this issue, it includes Egypt, totally call it the Middle East and North Africa(aka MENA).
Throughout the time, MENA has a long history of religious conflicts, colonization turmoils, and civil wars. Researchers mark here by economic, religious and linguistic differences. There are three salient aspects of the language policy discuss.
1. Diglossia.
It means the "two or more varieties of the same language are used by some speakers under different conditions"(Ferguson,1959). Students from lower socioeconomic background usually have difficulties learning the combination of the Arabic script and syntax on top of their native dialect. In reality, the colloquial vernaculars are not always excluded, but some exam, e.g. OECD PISA only tested formal version( Fusha). And it can mislead the students' authentic performance.
2. Arabization.
It's controversial that the language policy designed to strengthen the status of Arabic. The original attempt was to reverse language shift made by colonialism and modern globalization. There are some brief introductions here.
1) Arab Maghreb Union(AMU). It was colonized by France and French became the main language of education, administration, and media. When Morocco and Tunisia were independent in 1956 and Algeria in 1962, the union started to adopt a policy of Arabization. It is striving to create a monolingual nation but faces many challenges of promoting multilingualism.
2) Lebanon. It gained independence in 1943 and made Arabic the only one official language then, later on, suffered civil war from 1975 to 1990. The war weakened the public education system and gave away many opportunities for private institutions to teach English or French. Even the authority would like to revive the status of Arabic, English and French are used in schools for mathematics and sciences.
3) Israel. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Jewish national movement successfully revived the Hebrew language but effaced much of the linguistic variety of both Palestinians and the Jewish people. After Israel's independence in 1948, they maintain the Hebrew as the majority language but have the fear of its status.
4) Libya. The locals show the negative attitude toward English learning because of some anti-American feelings. Therefore it's a taboo if people speak English in public.
5) Other MENA countries, the establishment of Arabic language academies in Amman, Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo successfully reinforce Arab identity through Arabization.
3. Minority language, multilingualism and language education
After independence, many linguistic minorities were often oppressed due to be seen as an obstacle to the uniformity. There is still some minority right far from being addressed. However, following the situation of unemployment, international education and the internet use, people start to adjust their perception of foreign language and bilingual education. For instance, Berber, the language of almost half of the population was given official status in 2011.
The research of language education in MENA is pieces due to political instability, for instance, ISIS organization. The result is often difficult to analyze because of different interpretation and evaluation among groups in MENA. Besides, war zone keeps researchers from getting reliable information.
In my conclusion, the bilingual education history in MENA goes along with their religious, political history. Limited accountable resources impede the understanding of full picture across the whole region, but foreign language learning is gaining foothold slowly but surely.
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