Multilingual Education and India

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...

Ranjitsinh Disale (Photo used with permission from the  Varkey Foundation ) Congratulations to Ranjitsinh Disale on being nominated for a prestigious prize for innovations in girls' education. Good to read that "Disale not only translated the class textbooks into his pupils’ mother tongue, but also embedded them with unique QR codes to give students access to audio poems, video lectures, stories and assignments."

Last month textbooks in 5 tribal languages and 2 regional languages were released by the government of Jharkhand.   Last month textbooks in 5 tribal languages and 2 regional languages were released by the government of Jharkhand. They have been distributed to around 1,000 schools in 8 districts for initiating the Mother-Tongue-Based Multilingual Edu...

Textbooks in Jharkhand Earlier this week the governor of Jharkhand pleaded that Santhali children should be educated in their mother tongue. It looks like this is indeed going to happen and not only for Santhali, but also Mundari, Ho, Kudukh and Kharia children . The Telegraph reports this week: Ethnic kids of Classes I & II to open new page next year . Binay Pattanayak and his team at the Unicef Jharkhand office has been working closely with the Jharkhand Council for Education, Research and Training (JCERT) to prepare textbooks for langauge and maths for class 1 and 2 in five tribal langauges. The plan is that they will be introduced from the next academic session onwards.