Multilingual Education and India

Jharkhand is a state full of tribal communities and therefore has a rich palette of languages. The state government is implementing the National Curriculum Framework  and has launched the PALASH Multilingual Education Program which aims at enhancing learning outcomes in all subjects by integrating children's first languages in primary education.  Good to note that they are consulting with Language Learning Foundation, UNICEF and other agencies. It will be interesting to watch where it will land in the spectrum between the "pedagogically ideal" and the "political feasible" when it comes to implementation.  The PALASH Multilingual Education Program launched by Jharkhand aims to improve access to education for tribal children by integrating mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE). Tribal children often face educational challenges due to the gap between their home language and Hindi, the medium of instruction in most schools. The PALASH program address...

Good to see that the Rajasthan government is taking concrete steps to bring the local languages into the classroom. It is particularly encouraging to note that this initiative is not only focusing on the language, but also including the culture and folklore. Still, the initiative is not fully in line with the National Education Policy and the common pedagogical consensus that the local language should be the language of instruction as the medium of instruction will remain Hindi. Nevertheless it is clearly a step in the right direction! According to news reports, the Rajasthan State Council of Educational Research and Training (RSCERT) has identified 18 dialects that will be integrated into classroom teaching for classes I to V in state schools in the 2024-25 academic year. The main aim is to reduce the gap between the home and school environments for students.( Education Times / Times of India ) Before this initiative a language mapping survey by RSCERT showed that 20% of teachers wer...

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...

Odisha has for years been on the forefront of the multilingual education efforts in India. It is good to note that the government has decided to expand the program. According to this latest news report, the government of Odisha has announced that they will add 200 more teaching posts of Multilingual Education (MLE) in addition to the 200 posts already existing.. They will predominantly focus on working in districts with students from tribal and minority communities.  The government has also increased the number of languages under the promotion of  multilingual education from 10 to 16. The new languages to be included are Ho, Desia, Gadaba, Mundari, Sadri and Bhuyan.  ‘The expansion aligns with the state’s vision to preserve and revive tribal languages, fostering cultural heritage and inclusivity ,’  said secretary-cum-commissioner of the department Roopa Roshan Sahoo.( The Indian Express ) Currently  in Odisha, under the multilingual education programme, childr...

It is at the state level that the National Curriculum Framework really needs to be reshaped. Last month, the government of Maharashtra published  their draft State Curriculum Framework for the foundational stages of education. It is good to see the emphasis on using the mother tongue in the first years of education, but as the document seems to be mainly a copy and paste from the National Curriculum Framework, it needs to be seen how much this framework is really owned by the politicians and implementers. The state Government of Maharashtra introduced, just last month, a new curriculum framework for the foundational stage of education. This State Curriculum Framework (SCF) places emphasis on the use of a child’s mother tongue as the primary medium of instruction in the early years or foundational stages (age 3‒8). The curriculum states that it aims for students to be able to read and write by class 3. According to the Hindustan Times article : “The framework—State Curriculum Fra...

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...