Multilingual Education and India

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 Language Learning Foundation has been generous enough to share their  webinar series which discusses the complexities of Multilingual Education in the Indian linguistic context in light of the National Education Policy 2020 and NIPUN Bharat guidelines. These webinars were organised during the month of August - September, 2022 and are readily available resources accessible on YouTube. The webinar links have been provided in the titles below and in the Resources section.  Three webinars were organised. The first two were conducted in Hindi, and the third one in English. The links and details of each webinar are given below. The speakers’ contributions were very valuable as the speakers were experts in their fields belonging to institutions such as Harvard, NCERT, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, UNICEF, LLF, experienced teachers,  and MLE specialists.  Webinar 1: Inclusion of the Children’s Home Languages in Foundational Learning This Webinar discussed the importance of including the children’

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

Good to note that there is an International Day of Sign Languages! Sign languages are vital for the large deaf communities in the country and need recognition. Even last week I was in a meeting where I again heard about tens of thousands of deaf children who grow up without language as nobody teaches them how to sign. Recognition of this problem is very much needed and so is literacy for the deaf. On World Sign Language day on the 23th of September, Hindustan Times reported that disability rights activists and members of the Deaf Association in Pune spoke about the fact that students who are hearing impaired often have limited study options. This meeting focused particularly on the opportunities for higher studies as many universities do not offer courses in sign language.  However, as shown in his beautiful Oscar-winning short film, The Silent Child : many deaf children around the globe, even at the primary level, are excluded from education. Definition There are many misconceptions

The Language  and Learning Foundation has conducted India's first-ever language mapping of schools survey in Chhattisgarh: Language Mapping of Schools in Chhattisgarh .  The survey was carried out under the NIPUN Bharat initiative  in collaboration with the Government of Chhattisgarh and UNICEF India. The report  maps the different language situations that are present in each school with the aim to design an effective education strategy and policy. Through this research almost 30,000 schools were surveyed. The focus was on the first grade and the information gathered was mainly through the teachers. The following conclusion was stated in the summary of the report: The survey shows that in about 75% of the schools students are likely to face moderate to severe learning disadvantage due to the difference between their home language and the school language used as the medium of instruction. It also shows that about 95% of students at the time of entry to the primary schools speak a h