Multilingual Education and India

It is not often that a webinar about MLE attracts a large group of participants, but if you have a relevant topic and good speakers  it can be done! The recent webinar on multilingual pedagogies dealt with a reality that we often face in Indian classrooms that multiple languages are spoken by the learners. The webinar speakers had a good mix of theory and practice. No wonder it attracted a broad audience! A Webinar: ‘Multilingual pedagogies for all: Language-inclusive teaching and learning’ was hosted by The Asia-Pacific Multilingual Education Working Group, UNESCO Bangkok and UNICEF East Asia and Pacific on the 9th of July 2024. The presentations were aimed at discussing practical solutions for preparing teachers to lead multilingual classrooms through best practice models in various countries such as India, the Philippines, Thailand and Australia. The speakers were Kathleen Heugh from the University of South Australia, Sangsok Son from SIL Intl, Dhir Jhingran of the Language and

We often hear that multilingual education sounds good in theory but is hard in practice. The Citizens Foundation came up with a concept that can help in the design of a good program: The Language Ladder approach. As this approach places comprehension at the centre of learning, it is worth  taking note of. The beautiful materials help to get the message across. It was nice to even see a graphic of the  drawing colleague Dennis Malone made of pupils falling off the bridge that is supposed to bridge the gap between home and school. The concept of ‘Language Ladders’ was researched for six years before the report was written: ‘Language ladders’ show promise for introducing multilingual instruction in classrooms . Just like in India, the researched country has policies advocating for the use of the home language in education; however, the practical implementation of these policies is lacking. Students are unable to ‘comprehend’ the lessons taught in an unfamiliar language and end up dropping

The National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for foundational stage education was released by the Union minister for education last month. The good news for Multilingual Education is that the NCF highly recommends the use of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction in the primary and the pre-primary grades for both public and private schools: “The home language serves as a facilitator for all learning and enables children to form connections with prior learning and home learning.” (P 74). The NCFs are detailed guidelines based on which school syllabi undergo revisions. The first NCF, in 1975, called the mother tongue the child’s “most natural medium of communication.”  The NCF 2000 promoted the use of the mother tongue not just in primary school but beyond, throughout one’s education. NCF 2005 said that Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) would “normally be in the child’s ‘first’ language, or home language” should be used for education. Now finally we have reached the point wher

The National Education Policy (NEP) completed two years last month. This is a good reason to ask what the NEP 2020 has meant for multilingual education in India. There has been significant talk about introducing or strengthening  Multilingual Education in various state-level primary schools, but has there been action? The NEP 2020  has brought multilingual education higher on the agenda in India.  As an indicator, I did a quick research in Google and compared the Google hits in the  two years after NEP(2020-22) and two years prior(2018-20). I got 6500 hits since June 2020 when I searched for "Multilingual education" in India, while the two years before that had less than half of that.  The extra attention has caused a wider group of people to be thinking of the issues related to multilingual education. The home minister, for example, recently stated that, when we do not use Indian languages to teach, we are not able to utilise the full potential of the country. He also stress

  The World Bank has for many years been supportive of the concept of mother tongue-based multilingual education, (MTBMLE) but this year for the first time they produced a policy paper on it. The launch of the report last week was accompanied by a webinar on "Effective language of instruction policies for learning". The webinar included roundtable discussions with politicians, policymakers and practitioners. One of them being Dhir Jingran, the director of LLF in India.

Studies suggest that multilingualism has its benefits. (Getty Images) Rather than dichotomizing the teaching of English against in any local language, professor Neeta Inamdar argues that research shows that a simultaneous approach of multiple languages works better.

Report on research on reading acquisition in AP and Karnataka                         

Dear MultiLingual Education friends, It is always joy to hear positive stories from neighbours. The story below is from the neighbouring country, Vietnam. It is interesting to see how nearly 500 students from three minority language groups who are enrolled in bilingual education program,are doing remarkably well. They could catch up with the main stream, Kinh children, in various aspects such as admission to higher level school, drop-out rates, etc.

Dear Multilingual Education friends, A recent study from Europe is showing that Children from low income families benefit from being bilingual. NALDIC (National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum) based in England highlights an interesting study on this topic in their website ( http://www.naldic.org.uk/eal-advocacy/eal-news-summary/200912?dm_i=11M1,Z16E,7M1CX5,2XSTQ,1  ). Quote: “ This is the first study to show that, although they may face linguistic challenges, minority bilingual children from low-income families demonstrate important strengths in other cognitive domains..... Our study suggests that intervention programs that are based on second

Dear Multilingual Education friends, The report " Language issues in Educational Policies and practices in Nepal: A critical review " draws an interesting conclusion. It builds a strong case that just doing MT for the first couple of years ("early exit") does not work. The 50 page report is published by Australian Aid.  A quote: " ... children are not able to develop strong competence in their mother tongues until there are taught through L1 for the first 8 years as in Ethiopia. To promote quality education in Nepal, it is mandatory to promote teaching in children’s first language (be it Nepali or other local languages) for the first six years (at least) (ideally 8 years). The Ethiopian evidence shows that children learn English better when they h

Dear MLE friends, Out of the 80 participants from 20 countries 4 people from India attended the Workshop on Bridging Between Languages in Mother Tongue-Based Bilingual/Multilingual Education in Bangkok last month. The India participants were from Guwahati University (Dr Anita Tamuli & Prafulla Basumatari), Promotion & Advocacy for Justice, Harmony & Rights for Adivasis , PAJHRA (Luke Horo) and Center for Tribal Culture and Art Society (Ft Mahipal Bhuriya).