Multilingual Education and India

A lot of discussion is going on about the recent directive from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to get serious about implementing the National Education Policy with regards to teaching in the language most familiar to the children. It is good to note the writings that support this move, but we also need to take note of those who raise concerns about the practical feasibility.  The CBSE has issued a directive in alignment with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF 2023). Beginning in the 2025–26 academic session, CBSE-affiliated schools are asked to implement a “mother tongue first” approach, making instruction in students’ home or regional languages mandatory during the foundational and preparatory stages of schooling (from pre-primary to Grade 5)( Times of India ). This language directive seeks to reshape how language is approached in early childhood education across India’s diverse linguistic la...

It was a tremendous privilege to give a SAMVAD lecture at NCERT on Multilingual Education. Thank you Dr Sandhya Singh and Rama Meganathan for the invitation and warm welcome. It was good seeing some old friends like Binay Pattanayak there ! The SAMVAD Lecture Series was hosted by NCERT(National Council of Education Research and Training) and is available on their official YouTube channel for public viewing on the 10th of January, 2024.  The presentation  was titled “ MLE developments across the world and the current India policies and National Education Policy 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework 2023.” Some of the main sections of the presentation looked at the Global picture, the Indian scenario in the development of Multilingual Education(MLE), and the current initiatives/resources that are available.  The lecture began by introducing the definition of MLE and the rationale behind using MLE in education. Recent research studies were described which support ...

It is at the state level that the National Curriculum Framework really needs to be reshaped. Last month, the government of Maharashtra published  their draft State Curriculum Framework for the foundational stages of education. It is good to see the emphasis on using the mother tongue in the first years of education, but as the document seems to be mainly a copy and paste from the National Curriculum Framework, it needs to be seen how much this framework is really owned by the politicians and implementers. The state Government of Maharashtra introduced, just last month, a new curriculum framework for the foundational stage of education. This State Curriculum Framework (SCF) places emphasis on the use of a child’s mother tongue as the primary medium of instruction in the early years or foundational stages (age 3‒8). The curriculum states that it aims for students to be able to read and write by class 3. According to the Hindustan Times article : “The framework—State Curriculum Fra...

    The new National Curriculum Framework 2023 that came out this week has a strong focus on multilingualism. It wants to ensure that, by age 15, students achieve academic proficiency in at least three languages. Multilingualism is seen as a way to enrich the classroom environment and broaden the thinking of the children. Good! Of course I was particularly interested to see how it deals with the local language. As this new framework came out this week, Upasana and I had a look at what it says about the use of the local language in the classroom. The National Curriculum Framework 2023 (NCF 2023) was released on the 23rd of August 2023. It has been building on the NCF for Foundations Stages that came out last year. (See our blogpost on the NCF for Foundations Stages from November 2022.) According to the address of K. Kasturirangan, the chairman of the National Steering Committee for National Curriculum Frameworks, this document is the first integrated Curriculum Framework fo...