Multilingual Education and India

The National Education Policy (NEP) completed two years last month. This is a good reason to ask what the NEP 2020 has meant for multilingual education in India. There has been significant talk about introducing or strengthening  Multilingual Education in various state-level primary schools, but has there been action? The NEP 2020  has brought multilingual education higher on the agenda in India.  As an indicator, I did a quick research in Google and compared the Google hits in the  two years after NEP(2020-22) and two years prior(2018-20). I got 6500 hits since June 2020 when I searched for "Multilingual education" in India, while the two years before that had less than half of that.  The extra attention has caused a wider group of people to be thinking of the issues related to multilingual education. The home minister, for example, recently stated that, when we do not use Indian languages to teach, we are not able to utilise the full potential of the country. He also stress

The Hindu reported Nov 19, 2021 on Project ‘Samhati’   Odisha has been for years the most active Indian state with regards to Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTB – MLE). In the context of the new National Education Policy it has recently initiated Project ‘Samhati’ to ensure that tribal children are indeed taught in their own languages.

Dictionaries in 21 indigenous languages Over the last several weeks the Multilingual Education (MLE) program of the government of Odisha came 3 times to my attention: A presentation from the recent MLE conference in Bangkok, an excellent video clip explaining how the program works in the classroom and the news that 21 dictionaries were published.

New book on multilingual education in India with a special focus on teaching English.   Dr Mahendra Mishra is a well known figure in the area of multilingual education in India. He  was State Coordinator for Multilingual Education (1996-2010) in Odisha and spearheaded the mother tongue-based multilingual education in the primary schools in ten tribal languages there. So, when he (co-)writes a book, we better take notice! MLE proponents usually have a love-hate relationship with English as the English is often suppressing the building of a good foundation in the mother tongue. It is therefore quite courageous to write a book on " Multilingual Education in India: The Case for English ". The description makes you want to read more:  "Some perceive English language education as a hindrance to the growth of lndian languages and allege that it causes a social divide. The arguments of this book convincingly correct this uninformed notion and prove that English has

Policy Brief - Reading Solutions for girls in a multilingual setting   The 2015 Echidna Global Scholars Policy Brief has this year been titled Reading solutions for girls; Combating social, pedagogical, and systemic issues for tribal girls' multilingual education in India.   The 28 page Policy Brief has been written by Suman Sachdeva, Technical Director Education, CARE India. Here are a few highlights taken from a summary on the brooking website : The current approach to delivering effective multilingual education (MLE) for tribal students where tribal populations are more than 30 percent of the local population and where there are more than three dialects is inadequate overall and ignores gender-specific educational challenges. Although evidence suggests there is a small gender gap in reading ability between tribal girls and boys, in general girls are more heavily impacted by inadequate language skills in the short and long term as they become more vulnerable to

                  

Last Month the government of Odisha made a significant move in the expansion of the multilingual education program. The Times of India reports: "In a bid to extend the mother-tongue based Multilingual Education Programme (MLE), the state government has decided to use mother tongues as medium of instruction for the first five years in primary schools. In these classes, Odia will be taught as the second language from Class II and English will be introduced as a language subject from Class III."   Usha Padhee, secretary, school and mass education department, Government of Odisha affirms the long-term benefits of multilingual education. It seems that the Odisha government is the first one to take the education in the Mothertongue really serious. Mr Usha Padhee, secretary, school and mass education department states: "Continuing primary education for the first five years of school in the mother tongue will have several long-term benefits like sustained a

Congrats, Multilingual Education Friends, today is International Mother Language day! A nice description on West-Info-eu is given as follows: Today 21 st February , the International Mother Language Day is celebrated. Proclaimed the first time in 1999 by UNESCO , it is an important initiative to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multiculturalism. The date represents the day in 1952 when students demonstrating for recognition of their language, Bangla , as one of the two national languages of the then Pakistan , were shot and killed by police in Dhaka , the capital of what is now Bangladesh. However, due to globalization processes, languages are increasingly under threat  to the point that more than 50% of the 7,000

Dear multilingual Education friends, "We are just a few steps away from making mother tongue based early childhood education a reality for 1.4 million tribal children in Odisha" is quite a bold statement coming from State Convener of Odisha Adivasi Manch Ido Manda in presence of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. It was said at the occasion of the launching of a  Mother Tongue based Multilingual Early Childhood Education Learning Laboratory , a collaborative effort of KISS and Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF). A few quotes from The Indian Express  article title Multilingual Education Launched .: The CM also reiterated his Government’s commitment to make quality early childhood education in mother tongue a reality for 1.4 million tribal children of the State. The Early Childhood Development Programme through Mother Tongue based Multilingual Learning Education (MLE) is the first programme of its

Dear Multilingual Education friends, It is once again that Odisha is in the news with regards to the need to use the mother tongue of the children in the school. This time the initiative to raise a voice was taken by Save the Children (Good to see you name among the speakers, Sanjeev!) and Sikshasandhan. In the context of RTE  a state level consultation on Language, Tribal Education and Right to Education was held in Bhubaneswar last month. A few quotes from the Odishadiary website: A serious attempt should be initiated to explore the existing gaps to address the problems faced by the linguistic minority children, concerted advocacy efforts should be made by civil society groups, education activists and the government for the necessity of having a state level multilingual education policy (Dr Sanjeev Rai) Government has taken some initiatives in this regard meanwhile, but it needs to be expedited

Dear multilingual Education friends, Odisha has for several year be one of the front runners for multilingual education. It wants to expand the program and has decided to recruit teacher assistants ("Siksha Sahayaks") for the program. This move is part of a wider initiative to push the responsibility of the education down to the community. More details can be read in the article titled " Siksha sahayaks to be engaged in MLE ". A few quotes: Although the [MLE] programme had been implemented by transferring teachers with expertise in the tribal language to the MLE schools, absence of adequate number of teachers prompted the Government to engage siksha sahayaks for effective implementation of the programme. In fact, the Government has already approved a policy on MLE which calls for continuation of the programme and its coverage to all tribal children. In a latest resolution that seeks

Dear multilingual education friends, Using the mother tongue in the anganwadis or preschools is not only done in Orissa, but also in Malaysia. Dr Karla Smith wrote a book on it titled " Heritage Language Playschools for Indigenous Minorities ". The MTB-MLE website reports: This book contains administrative and curriculum materials that can be used to establish and operate playschool programmes for indigenous communities. Carefully sequenced steps, covering pre-planning to evaluation, outline the process of setting up a local playschool with the aid of community involvement. The content covers pre-reading, pre-writing and readiness skills and provides an abundance of practical advice, forms and ideas based on sound educational theory.

Dear multilingual education friends, There is more news on the new developments in Odisha / Orissa. Dharitri Patnaik of the Bernard van Leer Foundation wrote the below response to last week's message. To me the best news is that he reports that the demand is coming from the tribal communities themselves: The persistent campaign by tribals from the villages to the state capital has resulted in this directive. Demands for quality curriculum in tribal languages, recruitment of tribal men and women as teachers, centres in remote tribal hamlets and involvement of communities to monitor education are all part of the campaign.  This is confirmed by some of the newspaper links. It seems that the Odisha Adivashi Mancha (OAM) has been instrumental in this endeavour. DishaDiary reports : The OAM is currently working on details of a strategy to make the new directive effective. "We will meet the Chief

Dear multilingual education friends, Good news from Orissa. Chief Secretary Sri Bijay Kumar Patnaik has directed OPEPA to develop bilingual primers in tribal dialects for children from Class-1 to Class-III and cover all the schools having 100% monolingual tribal students. He also  directed to OPEPA to customize the Anganwadi study guide (Arunimain) in tribal languages in the context of their culture. The stories, rhymes, dance performances, folk-lores of the tribe concerned will be reflected in this.  In another development, nine new  tribal languages have been identified for inclusion in Multi  Lingual Education programme. These languages are Gutob, Ho, Gondi, Parja,Khaira, Didayita, Chhatisgarhi Odia, Binjhal (western Odisha) and Binjhal (for Bargarh region).

Dear Multilingual Education Friends, The evaluation report by NCERT's Department of Elementary Education on the Orissa MultiLingual Education projects under SSA/OPEPA is now available on-line at the TCF-SSA website *. These are some highlights from the summary: Overall, results suggested that children in MLE schools (treatment group) received significantly higher achievement scores than children in non-MLE schools (comparison group). However, scores for several Tribal languages showed that students of non-MLE schools did as well or even slightly better than students of MLE

Dear MLE friends, I don't think I have ever come across such an extensive analyses of the MLE programme in Orissa as the one from Dr Urmishree Bedamatta presented at the 2nd Philippine Conference Workshop on Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education   held February 16-18, 2012 titled: The politics of mother tongue based multilingual education: A case study on MLE for Juanga children in an eastern state of India The author does base her analyses on field visits, interviews and a wide range of literature study. Her analyses is critical. The abstract states: The analysis of the MLE programme with reference to classroom transaction, the teacher and the teaching learning materials led to the following conclusions: (a) the use of the mother tongue is a strategy to improve statistics on access with little concern for retention, (b) the use of the mother tongue does not guarantee