Multilingual Education and India

Dear MLE friends, Once again the JNU National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium (NMRC) has brought out a high quality newsletter . The main topic is the outcome of a longitudinal research spanning over the last three years done in Orissa and AP: "DOES MLE WORK IN ANDHRA PRADESH & ODISHA? A LONGITUDINAL STUDY" Some quotes: "To sum up, the findings across the two states and five time frames, it can be pointed out that in case of both Andhra Pradesh and Odisha,the MLE children had better overall performance in all the objective measures of achievement taken together; MANOVA analyses for the state specific data over the five time-frames showed clearly that the performance of the MLE children was significantly better than that of their non-MLE counterparts when all the variables are taken together." (P13) "All the MLE teachers interviewed (except one) expressed th

Dear MLE Friends, ASER Centre recently released Inside Primary Schools: A study of teaching and learning in rural India . Supported by UNICEF and UNESCO, this longitudinal study tracked 30,000 rural children studying in Std 2 and Std 4 in 900 schools across five states (Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Rajasthan). These children, their classes, schools and families were tracked over a period of 15 months (2009-2010) in order to take a comprehensive look at the factors in the school, in the classroom and in the family that correlate with children’s learning outcomes. (See a summary of the outcomes below) They also studied the difference between children whose home language is the same with children with a different home language. It makes clear that this indeed makes an impact on learning of the children. A quote: Children whose home language is different from the school

Dear MLE friends, A new MLE focussed international website has been set up that is certainly worth adding to your favourites: http://www.mlenetwork.org/ I enjoyed an article (with a nice 15 minute video ) on the Lango Literacy project in Uganda. The Resource Basket has 7 subtopics with lots of articles. I e.g. clicked on "Policy" and found about 15 articles on the topic. There is also a way to submit new articles yourself. Of course there is an events calender and there is a forum for discussions. I would recommend to subscribe to the website (Right hand corner) so that you have more privileges, can join in focus groups and get updates send to you.

Dear MLE friends, Do you have a need to convince your donors to support your efforts in MLE? Here is a good article published in The Guardian, with donors as its target audience: Donors need multilingual understanding . Some quotes: Evidence of education failure among children denied teaching in their first languages should inform a new approach to development aid Unfortunately, this push for international language isn't working for those most in need of the economic opportunities it brings. In many countries a large proportion of children's school drop-out rates and poor performance is caused by their inability to understand the English used in class. Teachers don't have good English themselves, which stops them using interactive teaching approaches. A lack of textbooks worsens the problem. For several years it has been accepted that children who don&#

Dear MLE friends, Most people think only of primary education when it comes to MLE. However here is a news-item from  Serbia where they are implementing an MLE strategy at university level: http://www.osce.org/hcnm/84518 Some quotes: A number of courses will be delivered in both Serbian and Albanian, with the proportion of Serbian-language courses gradually increasing during the four-year programme. This will give students from ethnic Albanian backgrounds the opportunity to both access higher education in their mother tongue, while also improving their proficiency in the State language, and is the first such initiative in Bujanovac. "This model is an example of how multilingual education can solve the dilemma of 'either mother-tongue or State-language education'. The educators' and authorities' joint effort here demonstrates that,"

Dear MLE Friends, You are probably already familiar with the good video clips on MLE on the web. There is now also a 3 minute clip on the UNDP education project in Bangladesh : http://www.beta.undp.org/undp/en/home/ourwork/capacitybuilding/successstories/Bangladesh-indigenous-languages-education.html A quote from the text: Multilingual education allows teachers to gradually introduce the official language of Bengali, so that towards the end of primary school students can switch completely to the national curriculum, which is taught in Bengali.This approach is delivering tangible results in a region where low school enrolment and high drop-out rates have been a problem for years. The change is being felt by all. “Now children are improving their learning in their mother languages and this has made them enthusiastic to come to the school regularly,” said Sujita Tripura, a multilingu

Dear MLE friends, A positive development at our northern neighbour Nepal: The establishment of a Multilingual Education (MLE) Resource Centre in Nepal has begun with the support of UNESCO. The Unesco website states here : "The MLE documentation centre will: provide necessary academic and research support to optimize multi-pronged engagement in providing quality MLE in Nepal; guidance for planning and implementation of MLE programmes; coordination between different MLE activities providing documentation and information resources; networking of various MLE interest groups, institutions and individuals; and establishing linkages to optimize effective utilization of expertise and materials for MLE programmes." I found it also encouraging to read the below: "It is expected that with the support of the MoE, the MLE resourc