Multilingual Education and India

Large-scale grassroots observations are rarely done and are a treasure for checking assumptions and developing teaching strategies. The Teaching Learning Practices Survey conducted by the Language and Learning Foundation has a special focus on language. This makes it very  relevant for the study of Multilingual Education. In this blog, we pick out the “jewels” in the treasure related to language. India’s classrooms are linguistically diverse. Children often come to school speaking a home language that is different from the school language. The Teaching Learning Practices Survey (TLPS) 2025 clearly shows this diversity by observing real classrooms across nine states. Instead of relying only on tests or reports, the survey went inside 1,050 classrooms to see how teaching and learning actually happen. This makes the findings especially important for people working on mother tongue–based multilingual education (MLE). The survey finds that 73% of teachers know the children’s home langua...

When UNESCO speaks, people listen. UNESCO does not tend to be an agency with lots of projects, but their voice comes with authority and therefore gets the attention of the media, government officials, and others. It is therefore very encouraging that the latest State of the Education Report on India has Multilingual Education as its theme. It is an extensive documentation of the main issues around Multilingual Education in India. At the event at which the report was released, important points were made with regards to the implementation of multilingual education in India. UNESCO launched the State of the Education Report for India 2025 , titled Bhasha Matters: Mother Tongue and Multilingual Education , in New Delhi on 17 December 2025, with a live stream on UNESCO India’s official YouTube channel . The report highlights the role of linguistic diversity and multilingual learning in improving access, inclusion and learning outcomes across India. It places mother tongue-based multilingual...

Language technology is getting a lot of attention these days but usually the focus is on the dominant languages.   I was pleasantly surprised that in a recent workshop organised by IIIT-Hyderabad, also the underserved languages were in focus. This is of course of interest for the multilingual education efforts in India as there is a significant shortage of support to create materials and tools for children that speak minority languages. IIIT-Hyderabad recently hosted a multi-day workshop focused on low-resource Indian languages, as noted by Prof. Sandeep K. Shukla . The institute organised Bahu Bhasa 2025 (6–8 Nov 2025), a major event that brought together technologists, linguists, community leaders and policy stakeholders to reimagine the future of Indian languages in the digital age ( Deccan Chronicle ). This mix of research and public dialogue connects language-technology efforts (Natural Language Processing – NLP, speech, language resources) to India’s broader educational goal...

It was inspiring to listen to Dr Subir Shukla at the Lead India webinar recently. Subir challenged us that we tend to spend far too much energy and time on the 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘤 dimensions of  multilingual education: developing textbooks, solving orthography issues, creating certificates, etc. We should spend more energy on the 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘤 dimensions: using the languages of the children to connect with the children, to draw them out, to let them engage. That makes more difference in the learning results than getting the curriculum in the "right" languages. If that is the case, we might need to change the narrative around what MLE is about . Let us explore what Subhir had to say! At the September 2025 LEAD Community of Practice meeting, Dr. Subir Shukla challenged a persistent misconception about Multilingual Education (MLE): that MLE is seen as a project but should be more than a project or program — a part of the education system as a whole. While acknowledging the t...