Multilingual Education and India

Dear MLE friends, A while ago I travelled with a donor to review an MLE related project in North East India. Her concern was that our efforts to develop the local languages and use them in the schools would encourage the ethnic conflicts. Today I saw an IBN article titled " Language, the basis of unity and conflict " by Prof H S Shivaprakash on this very issue.  A few quotes: Language, as one of the most pre-eminent expressions of human civilisation, has always been the source of unity and conflict in human history. There have been times when the unity of diverse peoples was imposed by existing forms of tyranny as in the case of Roman Civilisation. Equally numerous are the cases when language question figured prominently as a means of self-assertion as exemplified by the emergence of Bangladeshi and Ukrainian nationalism in the recent past. India never had the counterp...

Dear MLE friends, Once again the JNU National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium (NMRC) has brought out a high quality newsletter . The main topic is the outcome of a longitudinal research spanning over the last three years done in Orissa and AP: "DOES MLE WORK IN ANDHRA PRADESH & ODISHA? A LONGITUDINAL STUDY" Some quotes: "To sum up, the findings across the two states and five time frames, it can be pointed out that in case of both Andhra Pradesh and Odisha,the MLE children had better overall performance in all the objective measures of achievement taken together; MANOVA analyses for the state specific data over the five time-frames showed clearly that the performance of the MLE children was significantly better than that of their non-MLE counterparts when all the variables are taken together." (P13) "All the MLE teachers interviewed (except one) expressed th...

Dear MLE Friends, ASER Centre recently released Inside Primary Schools: A study of teaching and learning in rural India . Supported by UNICEF and UNESCO, this longitudinal study tracked 30,000 rural children studying in Std 2 and Std 4 in 900 schools across five states (Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Rajasthan). These children, their classes, schools and families were tracked over a period of 15 months (2009-2010) in order to take a comprehensive look at the factors in the school, in the classroom and in the family that correlate with children’s learning outcomes. (See a summary of the outcomes below) They also studied the difference between children whose home language is the same with children with a different home language. It makes clear that this indeed makes an impact on learning of the children. A quote: Children whose home language is different from the school ...

Dear MLE friends, A new MLE focussed international website has been set up that is certainly worth adding to your favourites: http://www.mlenetwork.org/ I enjoyed an article (with a nice 15 minute video ) on the Lango Literacy project in Uganda. The Resource Basket has 7 subtopics with lots of articles. I e.g. clicked on "Policy" and found about 15 articles on the topic. There is also a way to submit new articles yourself. Of course there is an events calender and there is a forum for discussions. I would recommend to subscribe to the website (Right hand corner) so that you have more privileges, can join in focus groups and get updates send to you.

Dear MLE friends, Do you have a need to convince your donors to support your efforts in MLE? Here is a good article published in The Guardian, with donors as its target audience: Donors need multilingual understanding . Some quotes: Evidence of education failure among children denied teaching in their first languages should inform a new approach to development aid Unfortunately, this push for international language isn't working for those most in need of the economic opportunities it brings. In many countries a large proportion of children's school drop-out rates and poor performance is caused by their inability to understand the English used in class. Teachers don't have good English themselves, which stops them using interactive teaching approaches. A lack of textbooks worsens the problem. For several years it has been accepted that children who don...

Dear MLE friends, Most people think only of primary education when it comes to MLE. However here is a news-item from  Serbia where they are implementing an MLE strategy at university level: http://www.osce.org/hcnm/84518 Some quotes: A number of courses will be delivered in both Serbian and Albanian, with the proportion of Serbian-language courses gradually increasing during the four-year programme. This will give students from ethnic Albanian backgrounds the opportunity to both access higher education in their mother tongue, while also improving their proficiency in the State language, and is the first such initiative in Bujanovac. "This model is an example of how multilingual education can solve the dilemma of 'either mother-tongue or State-language education'. The educators' and authorities' joint effort here demonstrates that,"

Dear MLE Friends, You are probably already familiar with the good video clips on MLE on the web. There is now also a 3 minute clip on the UNDP education project in Bangladesh : http://www.beta.undp.org/undp/en/home/ourwork/capacitybuilding/successstories/Bangladesh-indigenous-languages-education.html A quote from the text: Multilingual education allows teachers to gradually introduce the official language of Bengali, so that towards the end of primary school students can switch completely to the national curriculum, which is taught in Bengali.This approach is delivering tangible results in a region where low school enrolment and high drop-out rates have been a problem for years. The change is being felt by all. “Now children are improving their learning in their mother languages and this has made them enthusiastic to come to the school regularly,” said Sujita Tripura, a multilingu...

Dear MLE friends, A positive development at our northern neighbour Nepal: The establishment of a Multilingual Education (MLE) Resource Centre in Nepal has begun with the support of UNESCO. The Unesco website states here : "The MLE documentation centre will: provide necessary academic and research support to optimize multi-pronged engagement in providing quality MLE in Nepal; guidance for planning and implementation of MLE programmes; coordination between different MLE activities providing documentation and information resources; networking of various MLE interest groups, institutions and individuals; and establishing linkages to optimize effective utilization of expertise and materials for MLE programmes." I found it also encouraging to read the below: "It is expected that with the support of the MoE, the MLE resourc...

Dear MLE friends, The third issue of the UNESCO Multilingual Education Newsletter is out. You can find it at: http://www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=12786 In the issues are MLE related news items and articles from all over the world. In the resource section I found e.g. the following publication: ·  Closer to home: how to help schools in low- and middle-income countries respond to children's language needs by Helen Pinnock, Pamela Mackenzie, Elizabeth Pearce and Catherine Young In the events calender I  e.g. saw  ·  2nd Philippine Conference-Workshop on Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education EFA and MTBMLE 2015 and Beyond , Philippines; 16 - 18 February 2012

Dear MLE friends, In the press we have read about the progress on the Ganesh Devy's People's Linguistic Survey of India. In a recent article in the GlobalPost titled " India: fight to preserve dying languages " the potential  educational impact of that survey was also mentioned: "Though various studies have shown that children learn better when taught basic concepts in their mother tongue before attempting to master a second language, India prioritizes just 22 out of the 900-odd languages that Devy seeks to catalogue, and the state's promised free and compulsory education is most often available in fewer still. “In the Constitution of India, there is a special schedule of languages, which alone receive official support,” said Devy. “When the schedule was created after independence, it had 14 languages. Now it has 22. All the funds for ...

Dear MLE friends, A good transition from the local language to the dominant language is crucial for a good MLE programme. Below is given your chance to learn more about it and plan for a good transition process.

Dear MLE Friends, As you know the Right to Education  act (RTE) does support education in mother tongue, but has stated it quite weakly by adding the wiggle line "as far as possible". The All India Forum for Right to Education (AIF-RTE)  therefore organised a National Workshop "Language and Education" earlier this year. Recently they published a "National Call" with a strong urge to strengthen the appeal for using the mother tongue; We express our deep concern that 'The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009' (henceforth referred to as the RTE Act) has made a mockery of the crucial role of the mother tongue at the formative pre-primary (nursery, KG) and elementary (Class I-VIII) stages by stating that education in the child's mother tongue will be provided only if it is 'practicable' [Section 29 (2) (f)]. By doing this, the RTE Act ...

Dear MLE friends, It seems to be conference season! This time it is our northern neighbour China hosting a conference on “ Zero Barrier Bilingual Education ” . It will be their first International Conference on MLE. The dates: 25-28 October 2011 and the venue: Jinghong City, Xishuangbana Prefecture, Yunnan, China .The hosts for the conference comprise of the Yunnan Provincial Ministry of Education, Yunnan Ethnic Affairs Commission and SIL East Asia. Over the two-day conference, papers will be presented and discussion groups organized to discuss current world trends in bilingual education and pedagogy, results of practical experiments, development of approaches to bilingual instruction and other related academic issues, in order to better serve minority groups.

Dear MLE friends, The MLE programme in Andra Pradesh is one of the biggest in the world. It is impacting 68000 children in over 2000 schools in 8 tribal languages. A few year s ago an impact study was done for the first two grades. That report many of us had never seen, but is worth noting. It is called: A study on the comfortability and impact of class ii tribal language primers and classes I & II Mathematics Textbooks . The study was done by Prof Dr Shashidhar Rao of the Education Department of Institute of Advanced Study in Education for SSA. It gives a thorough documentation for each la nguage community on the opinion of teachers, parents etc. and also the achievements of the children. A few conclusion: 11. Parents expressed happiness over this and studied that the intervention ...

Dear MLE friends, Good news: an MLE conference in India! The National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium (NMRC) of JNU will hold an International Consultative Meet on MLE in collaboration with UNICEF, UNESCO, CIIL and other organisations, from 19th - 21st September 2011, in CIIL (Mysore). The seven page concept note on "MOTHER TONGUE BASED MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION: FRAMEWORK, STRATEGIES AND IMPLEMENTATION" is worth reading. It gives an overview of what is going on in India, also paints the picture of the activities in the neighbouring countries and notes the trends.

Dear MLE Friends, The Centre for Universal Education at the Brookings Institute has just published " A Global Compact on Learning: taking action on education in developing countries ." It outlines six strategies, one of which is "Provide Mother-Tongue-Based Multilingual Education in the Lower Primary Grades". A couple of quotes: "Although implementing a mother-tongue-based multilingual policy requires additional resources for start-up, the costs per primary school completer may be much lower due to increased learning, reduced repetition and dropout rates, and increased completion rates. For example, in the case of a bilingual program in Mali, costs per primary school completer were reduced by 27 percent and resulted in higher academic achievement." "Two main actions need to be taken to achieve Strategy 2B: • Develop a comprehensive language p...

Dear MLE friends, South Africa is doing an experiment where children from the minority group get the classroom interactions translated via an interpreter. " Six months into the project (...) education officials, teachers and interpreters are enthusiastic about the results. " "The project, run by the language directorate of North-West University's (NWU) institutional office, entails the interpretation of lessons from English to Setswana in grade one, and Afrikaans lessons are interpreted to English from grades two to seven. In this way, three languages are involved in the project " Read more at: http://mg.co.za/article/2011-07-20-found-in-translation/    

Dear MLE Friends, The upcoming international language development conference on Language and Social Cohesion is hosted by Sri Lanka. It has a special track on Education. The sub-themes under Education are: Social integration through language curricula and teaching materials Education, language and social inequality Bi lingual and multilingual teaching including practical approaches Language as a subject in the curriculum vs. language as the medium of instruction Innovation in language teaching and teacher training

Dear MLE friends, The latest issue of the UNESCO MLE Newsletter has an impressive list of news items, resources, events, etc. I was e.g. not yet aware of a conference close by: ·  9th International Language and Development Conference "Language and Social Cohesion." , Sri Lanka; 17 - 19 Oct. 2011 . Or how about an article on Native language skills key to Inuit academic success ?

Dear MLE Friends, In the Philippines MLE is implemented large scale by the government. Today I saw a  article on " Folk knowledge and  MLE" in a national newspaper at which prof. Ricardo Ma. Duran Nolasco,   shares his experience with the programme. A few quotes: "The remarkable thing about these training events was the overwhelming enthusiasm and dedication of the teachers, mostly in their 20s and early 30s, in producing primers, alphabet books, big books, small books and lesson exemplars in their own languages. Never before in our education history have I seen production of educational materials in native languages attempted in such a scale." "... there is much to learn about our past and our heritage from our country’s communities. In promoting such knowledge in formal education, we also uphold their right to exist, their right to reproduce their language, and their right to pract...

Dear MLE friends, A useful way to promote a local language are dictionaries. Nowadays they do not need to be distributed in printed formats but can be web based and be printed on demand. A new free tool has come out to enable language communities to start building up a dictionary. This can be very helpful for teachers to help learn the local language. The tool is free and is called "Webonary". The website states: Webonary gives language groups the ability to put their bilingual or multilingual dictionaries on the web with a minimum of technical help. Each dictionary is built around a search bar, which looks for a word throughout the dictionary, and returns the most relevant results to the top of the list.

Dear MLE Friends, The National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium (NMRC) just published an excellent overview of MLE related resources in India. It gives a brief description for each items and a snapshot picture. There is also a list with names of experts. Worth looking at! Link: http://www.nmrc-jnu.org/nmrc_img/Resources%20for%20Multilingual%20Education%20in%20India.pdf . The table of content is copied below.

Dear MLE friends, The British Council has recently published a collection of papers examining the relationship between language and development.  The book, 'Dreams and Realities : Developing Countries and the English Language', can be downloaded at http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/transform/books/dreams-realities-developing-countries-english-language . There is also a paper on India in this collection titled: 4. Language policy in education and the role of English in India: From library language to language of empowerment . It has lots of interesting information on the use of the majority languages in the classrooms, but has no references to the issue of minority languages and the projects in mother tongue based multilingual education. Anybody likes to challenge the publishers on that?

Dear MLE friends, Good news from our northern neighbour: the Multilingual Education efforts in Nepal have been noticed and will be evaluated. The Unesco website states: The study will review the government’s commitment towards multilingual education, analyse the current practices and impacts on children’s performance, and evaluate the attitudes of education authorities and parents towards multilingual education.

Dear MLE friends, Several people asked what kind of courses are offered related to MLE. Therefore a page has been added to the MLE-India blog with a list of MLE related courses and events .

Dear MLE friends, Below is a funding opportunity that might be relevant for some of your projects.

Dear MLE Friends, The World Bank's new education strategy   was published earlier this week. For the first time it includes a statement on the language of instruction. In the section on children between the ages of 6 and 8 it states: " Children in these age groups benefit from the instructional use of their mother tongue, combined with instruction in the dominant language .". The phrasing seems a bit weak is it leaves ...

Dear MLE friends, There are several journals related to Multicultural Education that are of interest to MLE practitioners and scholars. Below is an overview from one particular publisher. The articles can be read on-line for free. But If I understand it right it will only be free till the end of this month. Enjoy it! Here is the link:  http://www.educationarena.com/journals/bySubject.asp?subject=SCED48

Dear MLE, A new MLE newsletter has been started by the Asia Multilingual Education Working Group under the Thematic Working Group on Education for All . See below. It seems very worthwhile to subscribe. Thanks to Dave Pearson for the tip.

Dear MLE Friends, Over the last few months several people asked me what MLE related projects are actually going on in India. So we have started an overview of MLE related projects . However this overview is (hopefully!) far from complete. If you know of any MLE related project not yet on the list, please let us know. That way we can make the list more complete and learn from each other. Any other type of feed-back on the posted list is of course welcome too!

Dear MLE friends, This week a lot of news items were found on the internet related to multilingualism and MLE because of the celebrations on the Mother Language Day. The release of a new report from SC is one that caught my eye because it also has references to India: Reflecting language diversity in children’s schooling: moving from ‘Why multilingual education’ to ‘How?’ by Helen Pinnock . Here is the news release from the CfBT website: Today, 21 February, CfBT releases new research to coincide with International Mother Tongue Language Day. The research, undertaken with Save the Children, examines how multilingual education in Africa, Asia and Latin America can be made possible.  The research focuses on two well-developed multi-lingual education projects run by Save the Children with local partners in Vietnam and Bangladesh as well as material from govern...

Dear MLE friends, Congratulations, today is Mother Language Day ! This occasion started in our neighbouring country, Bangladesh. Read more about how they are marking this day (including a summary of the history): http://bdnews24.com/details.php?id=187834&cid=2 A UNESCO focussed press release is here: http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/305367/international-mother-language-day Enjoy this day, talk about it will colleagues and celebrate your own Mother Tongue!

Dear MLE Friends , Some state governments take the language of instruction issue of the Right to Education Act quite seriously. According to the Hindi newspaper Amar Ujala the Himachal Pradesh government has decided to have the teachers use the local languages in teaching the different subjects in the schools. If this is indeed going to get implemented that would be very innovative. Books and articles The MLE-india.blogspot.com site now has a separate page on MLE related books and articles . Check it out and let us know if relevant publications are missing. See Full article in Hindi

Dear MLE friends, A new book is coming out which is focusing in the linguistic minorities in India and on the policies related to that in particular: Language Policy and Linguistic Minorities in India: An Appraisal of the Linguistic Rights of Minorities in India Thomas Benedikter You might place an advanced booking as that will give you a good discount. See details below.

Dear MLE friends, Research outside of the western countries on the impact of education in the mother tongue is much needed. Below are some links to research presently going on in Africa.   EdQual is a research project consortium funded by DfID, studying education quality in low-income countries. On 15 November, it reported to DfID and other interested agencies along with 2 other research project consortia. As part of the EdQual programme, colleagues from Ghana and Tanzania looked into issues of medium of instruction and its relation to quality of learning. If you are interested in interim findings to do with MoI and textbook accessibility, please use the following links: http://www.edqual.org/publications/presentations/textbooks.pdf http://www.edqual.org/publications/presentations/Langofinstruction.pdf

Dear MLE friends, Each year ASER does extensive research on the impact that education makes. Their research data is highly valued, not only in the NGO world but also by the government itself. The 2010 report shows as well progress as declines. The press report states regarding the reading skills: Even after five years in school, close to half of all children are not even at the level expected of them after two years in school. Only 53.4% children in Std V could read a Std II level text. The Calcutta edition of the Telegraph reports " Tribal heartland betters its report card ", this is given as the reason: Santhal Pargana Gram Rachna Sansthan, the NGO that helped in survey work in Godda, credited the district's performance to maximum involvement of para-teachers, school teachers and Integrated Child Development Services centres. These units, set up under a Centre-sponsored scheme, addresses healt...

Dear MLE friends, For most of us the preservation of languages is not the main reason to be interested in MLE. Still we do see the value of language in relation to culture. The January Issue of the Indian version of the magazine GEO has a cover story on "Unspoken tongues'. Some relevant quotes: Few actually realise that languages are more than just a means of communication. They are emblematic of the way a people perceive the world and, thereby. offer a unique insight into the people who speak them and the cultures they represent. In the case of Bo and other Great Andamanese languages, they hold up a mirror to a tribal people whose culture dates back thousands of years. Kanji Patel, a writer in Panchmahali Bhili, one of Gujarat's many endangered languages, says there are three fundamentals requi...

Dear MLE friends, Last July the list forwarded a news item from The Hindu on new tribal scripts. I just learned that last October also Outlook wrote an article on this. See: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?267220 . A quote: “A script serves to legalise their language and protect their vast oral riches. But, more importantly, there is now a growing realisation that an indigenous, independent script also helps boost cultural identity,” says Sree. She uses easily identifiable symbols in her alphabets to strike a chord with the tribals. For example, an abstract bow and arrow is a motif in her script for the Kupias, who are renowned as skilled archers. New scripts are not for assertion of identity alone: they are also being created for accurately representing the unique sounds of tribal languages instead of letting them be drowned out, over time and...

Dear MLE friends, The National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium (NMRC) from JNU is producing a newsletter with quality articles on MLE. The latest newsletter is no exception on that. It does focus on the "as far as possible" phrase tagged to the mother tongue reference in the Right to Education act.  Some topics: Prof Anvita Abbi : "Don't kill my Mother (tongue)" Sara Poehlman: "Mother Tongue Instruction 'as far as practicable' as Child's' right" Sara Poehlman: "Story telling for effective language transition in Assam Tea Gardens" Sikshi Manocha: "Witnessing the change" (a powerful testimony on the impact of MLE in the Saora community in Orissa)

Dear MLE friends, The international conference on "Language, Education and the Millennium Development Goals" that took place in Bangkok last November has generated a set of interesting papers. They are now all on the web. Have a look at : http://www.seameo.org/LanguageMDGConference2010/presentations.html . Here are a few papers with a reference to India: Mr. Sanjeev Kumar Rai (Save the Children), Schools Marginalize Children in Multiple ways: Language Policy, Right to Education Act and Classroom Practices in India Ms. Jaya Krithika Ojha (Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee), Moving from Silence to Speech: Role of Language in Women empowerment in an Indian Desert Mr. Prashanta Kumar Routray (Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, India), Empowerment of tribals through education and sustainable livelihood: A Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) model Dr. Pamela MacKenzie (International ...

Dear MLE friends, It is not too often that we hear on MLE related issues from our North-Western neighbours. This article in the Guardian discusses a report stating that the Urdu and English dominance in the school "threatens to undermine social cohesion" "The report's key proposal is to provide teaching to students in the language they are most familiar with and, for the first time, reflect Pakistan's multilingual identity in classrooms. There are more than 70 languages spoken in Pakistan, yet Urdu, the national language and the medium of instruction in the majority of state schools, is spoken by just 7% of the population." Also good to note the following: "Coleman says his "wish list" for education reform has been positively received inside Pakistan. He is now in the process of analysing feedback before presenting his final proposals next April."

Dear MLE friends, First of all a happy new year to you all. May 2011 bring improvement to the education situation of the many deprived children in South Asia! "We need more research, more proof!" is what we often hear. Save the Children in Bangladesh did some research on the impact of an MLE project in the hill tribes. They published it in a 12 page report titled: " Getting ready for school in the Chittagong Hill Tracts:   A comparative analysis of mother-tongue- and national-language-based preschools in Adivasi communities ". A few lines from the concluding paragraph: "Despite all of these limitations, it is clear from the study that SKPís mother-tongue-based preschools do offer children a significant advantage.  SKP children have better quantitative, communicative, and environmental skills than their peers.  On average, children learning in a MT setting outperformed their non-MT peers...