Multilingual Education and India

  The NCERT/LLF  video lesson is making the concepts very clear for teachers There is quite a bit of material on the Internet about multilingual education aimed at an academic audience. This week I watched the newly published video lesson  hosted by NCERT aimed at primary school teachers. Dhir Jingran, together with other LLF staff are the resource persons and are making multilingual education very practical. I love the participatory way the lesson is designed: there are interactions, video fragments, brief explanations, helpful graphics and ways for the audience to ask questions: worth watching!

Quality Training for teachers and policy makers on the topic of Multilingual Education has always been a challenge. It is therefore good to note that a Certificate Course is under development in collaboration with Guwahati University.

Copyright  SIL-LEAD.org  Many of you might have met Dr. Susan Malone at one of her lectures during visits to India. As she has been training and mentoring teachers, supervisors, trainers and planners all across the globe she generated lots of articles, training modules and other resources that now have been made available for all of us.

In India low-cost private English medium schools are growing in popularity and in Ghana an early exit, transitional bilingual education model is promoted. The British Council, together with other institutions, did research at the classroom level in these countries on what this means for the learning of the children. The findings are worth considering with as key question: How to avoid damage to learning when teaching is through English?

New Education Policy India In 2015, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) initiated a consultation process for the formation of the New Education Policy (NEP). The full draft plan has not yet been released to the public but an input report has been published. The report includes several references to language including multilingual education. Image Credit: Flickr/ Yorick_R (CC BY 2.0) The background of the New Education Policy (NEP) and the reason for the slow process are given in the article published earlier this month India’s New Education Policy: Creeping 'Saffronization'? The aim of the new policy was "to respond to the 'changing dynamics of the population’s requirement with regards to quality education, innovation and research' and help the country move towards becoming a knowledge superpower.". The Diplomat reports that the process was slowed down because of saffronization acquisitions.

5th International Conference on Language and Education   The International Conferences on Language and Education, which have been organized by a large group of agencies in Asia, have over the years impacted many projects in India. The 5th one will be held this year, again in Bangkok. The following announcement has been copied from the UNESCO MLE Newsletter   Asia Pacific Multilingual Education Working Group (MLE WG) will be organizing its 5th International Conference on Language and Education on 19-21 October 2016 in Bangkok , Thailand. The 5th International Conference on Language and Education will take stock of recent developments in MLE policies and practices in the Asia-Pacific region, with a special focus on multilingual education in early childhood and primary education.        It will likewise look at innovative pedagogies in the training of MLE teachers. Finally, it will examine challenges and lesson learned from the EFA experience and give opportunities for for