Multilingual Education and India

  Photo credit: https://asiapacificmle.net/conference/2023/   The Multilingual Education Conference in Thailand has always been a great place to meet with fellow-educationalists with a passion (or at least interest!) for Multilingual Education. Because of Covid it was a bit delayed, but I was glad to learn there will be one this year in October. I hope there will be many presentations from India. There are only a few weeks left to get abstracts submitted.  See the announcement copied below. _________________________________________________________________________________ The Asia Pacific Multilingual Education Working Group (MLE WG) is pleased to announce the 7th International Conference on Language and Education to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, this 4 - 6 October 2023, and the first Call for Abstracts . The seventh edition will address multilingual education for transformative education systems and resilient futures. UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, UNICEF East

Dear Reader, Congratulations on International Mother Language Day 2023 ! On this day we are thrilled to share with you that the MLE-Inda blog has been updated now with the most current information. You can find much more information on Multilingual Education on our pages dedicated to Multilingual Policies in India , MLE Projects , MLE related resources and books and our latest new page on the Historical Overview of MLE in India . You can also read the latest blog on MLE in Andhra Pradesh for the month of February, 2023.  Please note that this Blog and the  resources mentioned here are a work in progress. Therefore, we invite you to point out any inconsistencies and share any updated information, should you have it. We also accept suggestions if you have any for the blog.  We also request you to share our blog as a resource to anyone who is interested in the cause of Multilingual Education, mother tongue and language related issues. Please feel free to send us information on any cours

Andhra Pradesh has a long history of engaging with multilingual education among the tribal groups. It is good to note that the latest initiative not only focuses on material development, but also on the training of teachers. Hopefully this will make the program more sustainable than previous attempts . While reading up on this, I discovered an NGO that I was not aware of: It is good to note what NEG FIRE is engaged with! According to the recent report from the Times of India , ‘teacher training modules’ have been developed for tribal languages of Andhra Pradesh. The Tribal Cultural Research and Training Mission (TCRTM) held a two-day workshop for the same at Rushikonda. Mother-Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) has been implemented in 1,350 schools in the state according to this news report. The languages covered by this include the Koya, Savara, Adivasi Oria, Jatapu, Kuvi, and Konda Dora.  They plan to train 1,400 teachers who are already working in these schools.( TOI repo

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’