Multilingual Education and India

This week is the International week of Sign Languages. When I watched a few years ago the Oscar winning short movie " The Silent Child ", it made a big impression on me: everywhere in the world many deaf children grow up without a language at all. What a tragedy!  In recent years more attention has been given to sign languages. Including in India. Still we have a long way to go! The International Day of Sign Languages , observed on September 23, promotes awareness of sign languages in ensuring equal rights for the deaf community and the last week of September is observed as the International week of the Deaf . This year’s theme  for the International Day of Sign Languages highlights inclusivity and accessible communication for all. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 63 million people in India have significant auditory impairment, which is roughly 6.3% of the population.  The National Education Policy 2020(NEP 2020) recognizes the importance of prom...

It was good to attend the conference on “Language Education in Multilingual Contexts”  at the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad. Such a large amount of abstracts that were sent in that they had to set a limit on the number of attendees and presenters. This shows that multilingual education is presently a hot topic. Good!  “Translanguaging” was the buzzword of the conference. Prof Ajit Mohanty commented that it seems like a ghost: Everybody talks about it but nobody has seen it. Fortunately,  Dr Sangsok Son used a helpful metaphor that made the concept more concrete: the mixing of languages in the classroom is like spinning a top. Overall it was good that after several years there was an India-based language conference again! (see overview ) The English and Foreign Languages University of Hyderabad (EFLU) Department of Materials Development, Testing, and Evaluation organised a two-day, International Conference on Language Education in Multilingual Con...

Always good to see classroom level research done in India, particularly when it focuses on the language issue. The focus of this research is on the influence of multilingualism on reading performance. It is a small study but good to note that it shows how  teaching in a familiar language has positive effects, and also that children who do not speak the majority language need extra support. TESOL Quarterly (Wiley online library) recently published a research  article titled the “Effects of Mother Tongue Education and Multilingualism on Reading Skills in the Regional Language and English in India.” The research  examined how mother tongue education and multilingualism  influences the reading skills and reading comprehension of 1272 Indian primary school children from low income homes. The study took place across three sites in India, namely Delhi, Hyderabad, and Patna. The main aim of the study was to assess if there was a relation between mother tongue education/mult...

Producing materials in unofficial local languages can be quite challenging for a government. It is therefore worth noting that recently the education minister of India announced the release of 52 primers in non-scheduled languages. These primers can all be viewed online . We all know that producing materials is one thing, getting them distributed and used in the classrooms is another. But it is good that concrete steps are taken towards the need for encouraging the use of local languages in the classrooms, particularly in the early grades. Recently, the Union Education Minister of India, Dharmendra Pradhan launched and announced 52 textbooks/primers  in non-scheduled languages for early childhood care and education. The primers have been prepared by NCERT and Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysuru.  By non-scheduled languages we mean languages that are not included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution and therefore include smaller languages . The  prim...

It was a tremendous privilege to give a SAMVAD lecture at NCERT on Multilingual Education. Thank you Dr Sandhya Singh and Rama Meganathan for the invitation and warm welcome. It was good seeing some old friends like Binay Pattanayak there ! The SAMVAD Lecture Series was hosted by NCERT(National Council of Education Research and Training) and is available on their official YouTube channel for public viewing on the 10th of January, 2024.  The presentation  was titled “ MLE developments across the world and the current India policies and National Education Policy 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework 2023.” Some of the main sections of the presentation looked at the Global picture, the Indian scenario in the development of Multilingual Education(MLE), and the current initiatives/resources that are available.  The lecture began by introducing the definition of MLE and the rationale behind using MLE in education. Recent research studies were described which support ...

In my report on the Multilingual Education Conference in Bangkok in 2019, I mentioned a presentation from Anjela Taneja from Oxfam. I was very glad to note that Anjela has now taken the time to turn her findings into a paper so that we can all benefit from it. Upasana Lepcha has written below a helpful summary of the paper. Oxfam India has released a comprehensive paper on Multilingual Education (MLE) The Right to Mother Tongue-Based Education in Tribal India: A Comparative Perspective by Anjela Taneja. The paper  examines already existing Mother-Tongue-Based-Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) programmes in India for tribal populations. It brings to light the gaps and challenges facing MTB-MLE and makes recommendations on how to overcome them. The first part of the paper addresses the severe underuse of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction in India and how this is especially crippling for the tribal children. Although tribals  constitute 8.6 percent of the total popul...