NEP 2020: Why learning in mother tongue is effective but hard to implement

The idea of using the mother tongue as the medium of instruction in primary school is not new to the
Indian education system

Topics

New national education policy | schools in India | mother tongue

Shreya Khaitan | IndiaSpend | Jaipur

Last Updated at August 12, 2020 11:12 IST

learning, education

The 2011 Census listed 270 mother tongues; of these, as per a 2017 study, 47 languages were used as
mediums of instruction in Indian classrooms.

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Early schooling in a child's mother tongue, as recommended in the new National Education Policy, can
improve learning, increase student participation and reduce the number of dropouts, according to an
IndiaSpend analysis of evidence from around the world. However, this would need new books, fresh
teacher training and more funding, experts said. Also, given the multiplicity of languages and dialects in
India, it is difficult to home in on the one that can be used as the medium of instruction in an area.

The National Education Policy (NEP) approved by the Union Cabinet on July 29, 2020, says that wherever
possible the medium of instruction in schools until Grade V -- preferably until Grade VIII -- should be the
mother tongue or the local or regional language. “All efforts will be made early on to ensure that any
gaps that exist between the language spoken by the child and the medium of teaching are bridged,” the
NEP says.

“This is a tremendous idea. That is how it should be,” said Anil Swarup, former school education
secretary in the central government. Using the language the child is most comfortable with in the early
school years improves attendance and learning outcomes, and the ability to learn new languages.
Studies from around the world also show that it increases classroom participation, reduces the number
of dropouts and grade repetition.
Still, half of all children in low and middle-income countries are not taught in a language they speak,
estimated a 2016 report from the Education Commission, a global initiative for inclusive and quality
education.

Parents prefer to send their children to ‘English-medium’ schools regardless of the quality of education
they offer because of the perception that mastery of the English language ensures success in later life.
For example, in 2017-18, about 14% of those who were enrolled in private schools in India’s rural areas
and 19.3% in urban areas chose a private school because English was the medium of instruction.

Experts argue that an English education is not always the best. “You can learn to read and write best in
the language that you know. If you are taught in a language you don’t understand then comprehension
doesn’t occur and results in rote memorisation and writing it out through copying,” explained Dhir
Jhingran, a former Indian Administrative Services officer and the founder of Language and Learning
Foundation, an organisation working with state governments in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Haryana to
prepare study material in the local language and train teachers to use it.

“Good learning happens when children have high self-esteem, are well-adjusted in a classroom that
provides a positive and fearless environment. If the child is taught in a language they do not understand,
none of this will happen,” Jhingran added.

In 2019, in rural India, only 16.2% of children enrolled in Grade I could read a Grade I-level text, while
only 39.5% could add one-digit numbers orally, found the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) put
together by Pratham, an education nonprofit.

The 2011 Census listed 270 mother tongues; of these, as per a 2017 study, 47 languages were used as
mediums of instruction in Indian classrooms.

But teaching in the mother tongue is not a silver bullet to solve the problem of low learning outcomes,
cautioned Suman Bhattacharjea, the director of ASER Centre. “If the teacher is still focused on
completing the syllabus, on some level, regardless of what the language is, the content being transacted
is still not at the level that the child can understand,” she explained.

The NEP does not detail a plan to change the medium of instruction. For multilingual education (MLE) to
be successful, it has to be accompanied by pedagogical changes and trained teachers who can deal with
several languages in the classroom and teach in the child’s mother tongue, Bhattacharjea said.

Old idea but little implementation

The idea of using the mother tongue as the medium of instruction in primary school is not new to the
Indian education system. Article 350A of the Constitution states that every state and local authority
should endeavour to provide “adequate facilities for instruction in the mother-tongue at the primary
stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups”.
The report of the Kothari Commission on education and national development (1964-66) suggested that
in tribal areas, for the first two years of school, the medium of instruction and books should be in the
local tribal language. The regional language should be taught separately and should become the medium
of instruction by the third year.

The Right to Education Act, 2009, also said that as far as possible, the medium of instruction in school
should be the child’s mother tongue.

Odisha is the only state to formally incorporate MLE into its education system, and that too only for its
tribal areas. In 2007, the Odisha government introduced a programme in which the mother tongue of
students from scheduled tribes is used as the medium of instruction in primary school. Odia is taught as
the second language from Grade II and English from Grade III. Tribal languages continue to be taught as
subjects after primary school.

To make this possible, those teachers from the community who are fluent in the mother tongue as well
as in a second language (either Odia or English) are recruited, a 2014 circular from the government
announcing the extension of this programme said. Those who do not fulfil these criteria are hired on a
contract basis with the condition that they acquire those language skills. If no teacher from the
community fulfils this criteria, the government hires non-local teachers who are proficient in the local
language and familiar with the culture.

The government also created bilingual dictionaries, textbooks, supplementary reading material and
language handbooks in local languages such as Desia, Kuvi and Kui.

Convincing families

The commonest criticism of the policy to use the mother tongue in schools is that it widens the divide
between those who can communicate in English and those who cannot.

“It is fine for educationists to say that the local language should be the medium of instruction but that is
not what parents want, not what families want. They want English which they think will take their
children ahead in life,” said Bhattarcharjea of ASER, noting that there might be resistance from
communities in changing the medium of instruction. There has to be systematic outreach to parents to
help them understand that even English will become easier for their children if they start with the home
language, she said.

If schools teach in local languages, families too can be involved in their child's education, said Parismita
Singh, who works with a Pratham after-school programme that provides support to children in their
mother tongue in tribal and non-tribal rural areas in Assam’s Kokrajhar and Chirang. Community
members can also be hired as teachers as they are fluent in the local language.

Schools could continue to teach the regional language and English as subjects, experts say. Evidence
from Guatemala, for instance, shows that children in bilingual classes, which includes one of the Mayan
languages as the medium of instruction in primary school, perform better on Spanish language tests
than those in Spanish-only schools.
No clear implementation plan

“There will be innumerable problems in the implementation of this policy but they are not
insurmountable,” said Swarup, the former school secretary, highlighting the lack of an action plan in the
NEP to implement this or any other policy change.

He described the policy on mother tongue instruction as “politically acceptable”, since it is a part of the
NEP; “socially desirable”, as it would help improve learning in school; and “technologically possible”,
because it is possible to implement it. But it might not be financially viable because of the lack of funds,
he said, and also questioned the “administrative doability” of the policy because of the lack of trained
staff, including teachers, to implement the change.

For instance, a qualitative study on the implementation of MLE in Sundargarh, Odisha, found that
schools would not prioritise hiring MLE teachers and children were still reluctant to accept that they
spoke a different language at home, perhaps because of the perception that Odia was the superior
language.

Another challenge is selecting which mother tongues become the medium of instruction in a school and
which do not. “Language is extremely political,” said Singh of Pratham. For instance, students who speak
local languages such as Rabha, Santhali and Nepali attend Assamese-medium schools in the Kokrajhar
and Chirang areas where Singh works. If schooling in the mother tongue is only seen in opposition to
teaching in English and the state language is prioritised, then these children who should have benefited
from being taught in their home language will lose out, Singh pointed out.

As per the NEP, the aim of using regional languages is not just to improve a child’s learning outcomes,
but also for “instilling knowledge of India”. This “is considered critical for purposes of national pride,
self-confidence, self-knowledge, cooperation, and integration”.

“If this language is understood only from the point of national integration, that makes me wary of how
you will define it,” said Singh. This is very important especially in areas where she works, where many
languages have non-standardised scripts that are not accepted by everyone in the community. This is a
bigger challenge in areas that have seen ethnic violence in the past, she said.

Take, for instance, the 2017-18 National Survey Report on education. The report clubbed several
languages and local dialects into the 22 major Indian languages to understand whether the child spoke
the same language at home as the medium of instruction in school. By this metric about 72% of primary
school students had the same medium of instruction in school as their home language but this would
still not mean that the child was being taught in school in a familiar language.

Further, there is no clear path to implement this change and it is up to local governments and individual
institutions whether they want to implement these changes as it is not a mandatory policy.

The policy does suggest technological interventions to “serve as aids to teachers”, and developing or
translating “enjoyable” books into local languages and making these available in school and digital
libraries. It also suggests incentives for teachers who know local languages especially in areas with high
dropout rates and an overhaul of the curriculum to make it more engaging and useful.

Pilot projects, low-hanging fruits

Swarup suggested trying an MLE model out in some schools across the country for about three-four
years, identifying the problems in implementation and the cost of change and then preparing an action
plan that resolves these problems.

Introducing the local language as the medium of instruction should definitely be done in two situations--
one in areas located along interstate borders and for migrant populations, said Jhingran. He cited some
examples of areas where children speak one language at home but are taught in another in school --
Marathi-speaking children on Maharashtra’s border with Madhya Pradesh, Telugu-speaking children in
Odisha along the edges of Andhra Pradesh, or the children of Bihari migrants in West Bengal.

And in case of languages that can easily be used as mediums of instruction but are not. Jhingran gave
the example of Chhattisgarhi, which is spoken in 8-10 districts that could yield enough teachers
proficient in the language and enough literature too -- and would be accepted by the community -- but
is still not the medium of instruction in schools. “All over the country you have such languages… It would
not take a lot of investment to make a change like this,” he said.

Challenge of many mother-tongues

India has several languages--the 2011 census identified 270 mother tongues--and classrooms might have
children with more than one spoken language. “It might not be possible for all languages to become the
medium of instruction and it might not be possible for large parts of the country to implement this,” said
Jhingran.

He suggested an alternative to formal MLE -- the child’s language would not be the medium of
instruction but the government would formally mandate that the mother tongue be used in the
classroom by teachers and students. This would allow children to talk, debate and express themselves in
their language while also learning the regional language or English.

“When these changes were made we’ve seen these silent classrooms convert in 2-3 months -- [full of]
active, engaged children speaking, interacting,” said Jhingran.

One example is the Roshini programme in Kerala through which migrant children, who usually fall
behind in school partly because of the different medium of instruction, learn Malayalam through the use
of multiple languages including the child’s mother-tongue, as we reported in August 2019. This
programme convinced migrants to stay back in Ernakulam district during the lockdown because parents
did not want their children to lose out on school, we reported in July 2020.

‘Where are the funds?’

The initial investment in bilingual programmes can be high because of the additional cost of developing
new learning material especially for languages that have not been standardised or do not have a script,
experts said. It would also require teachers trained to teach in a multilingual classroom and new
teachers fluent in these languages. Evidence from Guatemala and Senegal in 1999 estimated that
producing local language material would cost about 1% of the education budget with decreasing
investment as time passes.

But “the additional cost more than pays for itself through improved learning outcomes”, said Jhingran of
the Language and Learning Foundation. For instance, in Guatemala, bilingual schooling, despite higher
costs, ultimately led to savings of US $5 million a year (over Rs 374 million) because it reduced dropout
and repetition, estimated this World Bank study from 1996.

“Hopefully as a result of this policy, things will change but saying that we want the medium of
instruction to be the mother-tongue is only the first step. We need all the other things to be in place to
make any meaningful change,” said Bhattacharjea of ASER.