Multilingual Education in India: Policy context, implementation challenges, and strategic interventions

• In Event: Rethinking Multilingual Education in Linguistically Diverse Situations in South Asia: What works? And what does not work?

Proposal

According to the Census of India 2011, there are 19,659 mother tongues, of which 1,369 have over 10,000 speakers. This linguistic diversity is unevenly distributed across 640 districts in 28 states and 7 union territories, reflecting a complex socio-linguistic landscape. At the primary education stage, 30 languages are currently reported as languages of instruction across the country. In addition, in the state of Odisha, a mother tongue-based MLE program is operational in 1,485 schools in 21 different tribal languages.
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 articulates that “wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/mother tongue/local language/regional language.” However, this policy is not easy to implement. One challenge is the non-availability of reliable school-wise data about children’s first languages and the languages that teachers know. Under India’s National Mission for Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN), three states—Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand—conducted school-based language mapping in collaboration with the Language and Learning Foundation (LLF) and UNICEF. This initiative surveyed approximately 1.1 million Grade 1 students in 100,000 government primary schools. The language mapping surveys have provided critical insights into (a) First and other familiar languages that children use and understand when they join school in Grade 1 (b) Teachers’ proficiency in different languages including the first languages of children and (c) the existence of ‘link’ languages in areas where children belong to different first language groups.
LLF has advocated for developing a range of strategies for including children’s first languages based on the results of the language mapping exercises. A comprehensive program framework has been developed for MLE that includes guidelines on teacher training, curriculum development, monitoring and academic support, student assessment and community engagement—components critical to the successful implementation of MLE programs. LLF’s MLE programs have been implemented in 5000 primary schools in three states in India. Third party evaluation results show that student learning of FLN skills has improved hugely compared with non-intervention schools. The paper also outlines findings from empirical research conducted in one of the MLE programs to understand how teacher beliefs and practices have changed over the three years of program implementation.
Overall, paper examines the strategies and experience of the LLF over the past five years in designing and implementing MLE programs at scale in collaboration with state governments across diverse sociolinguistic contexts in India.

Author

• Smriti Mishra, Language and Learning Foundation