Maharashtra’s controversial third language policy: Why National Curriculum Framework recommends a third language from Class 6

Following Fadnavis’s Sunday announcement, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and Shiv Sena UBT declared this rollback as a victory ahead of their planned protest on July 5.

Difference between national and state curricula

There is a significant difference in the stages at which the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) and Maharashtra’s State Curriculum Framework for School Education (SCF-SE) introduce a third language in school education.

According to the New Education Policy (NEP) floated by the Centre, school education is divided into a 5+3+3+4 pedagogical and curricular structure, replacing the current 10+2 format.

The first five years comprise the Foundational Stage, which includes three years of preschool, Class 1, and Class 2. The next three years are the Preparatory Stage, consisting of classes 3 to 5. The next three years constitute the Middle Stage, from classes 6 to 8, and the next four years comprise the Secondary Stage, from classes 9 to 12.

NEP says the three-language formula will continue to be implemented with greater flexibility, and no language will be imposed on any state. The purpose of the NCF-SE is to help bring about the changes recommended in NEP.

According to NCF-SE, R1 and R2 — the first and second school languages — are introduced from the Preparatory Stage, and by the end of the Middle Stage, a student is expected to understand and appreciate the distinctive features of the language, engage in collaborative discussions, and read and write independently in both the languages.

The framework adds a third language is to be introduced in the Middle Stage, which is from Class 6 onwards. “A new third Language, R3, is introduced in this (Middle) stage. Students acquire familiarity with the spoken form of this language, along with the basics of reading and writing.”

However, Maharashtra’s SCF-SE differed from NCF by calling for a ‘detailed introduction’ to R3 in the Preparatory Stage, which is Class 1 to Class 5. “For this stage and all subsequent stages, efforts should be made to bring the language courses to the same level of 100 marks for R1, R2 and R3,” it says.

Expert speak

Dhir Jhingran, Member, National Steering Committee for development of NCF, disagrees with formally introducing a third language in school education in Class 1 or Class 3.

Jhingran, who is also the founder of the Language and Learning Foundation, told The Indian Express that children should focus on developing a strong proficiency in their first language, and a second language in the early years. “And there the focus is on building the foundation of strong literacy in two languages, which means comprehension, reading, fluency, writing, et cetera. So it requires those five to seven years to build this kind of proficiency in two languages.”

“If the child has natural exposure to languages, for example, in a household, the grandmother speaks something else, the mother and the father speak something else, you’ll find a child is naturally able to pick up to three languages. But the problem is that if a child is formally taught, once you introduce Hindi or whatever as a subject, there’ll be a textbook, there’ll be teaching, the child has to do writing and there’ll be copying work taught in a very dreary and didactic manner, which makes it very difficult for the child to actually learn a language,” he says.

He says acquiring a language and gaining literacy in a language are two different matters. “Acquiring language means that a child at home picks up words and is able to speak, because we work through gestures, and the child picks up in different ways. But once you say literacy, the child has to understand which sound is for what symbol and how do you combine what are the spellings of different words, etc. It’s an overload for the child”.

Following political and academic backlash over the introduction of the third language, School Education Minister Dada Bhuse announced at the end of June that in classes 1 and 2, students would only be taught oral skills, with written skills to be introduced from class 3. However, this is still three years before the NEP recommendation of Class 6.

Jhingran also says increasing the curriculum burden on a child goes contrary to the goals of NEP. “Someone may argue that in Maharashtra, all children know how to listen to Hindi, and so starting it earlier is less problematic than, say, starting French in grade three. But again, if you teach it as a subject, you’re adding to the child’s workload. Science, social science, and math curricula are not going away, but you’re adding one more subject on which the child will be tested. So that is curricular overload. And NEP actually very clearly says, you should try to reduce the curricular burden.”

‘Freedom to make necessary changes’

The Maharashtra Government provided various reasons for deciding to implement the third language from Class 1. In a statement shared before the scrapping of the GRs, the School Education and Sports Department said, “Students enjoy learning a new language and can easily learn it at an easy level at a young age.”

It added that in Maharashtra, 10 per cent of students study in non-Marathi medium government-run schools, such as those offering Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati, and Urdu. These students are taught Marathi and English from Class 1 in addition to their medium language, and they learn three languages.

Therefore, it stated, if students from Marathi-medium schools are not taught a third language, they will lose out on Academic Bank of Credit points for classes 1 to 5. The state also argued that Hindi is familiar to children in Maharashtra from a young age; therefore, it will not academically burden the students.

“The Supreme Court has already made it clear that the National Education Policy 2020 is not binding on any state in the country. Therefore, the state has the freedom to make necessary changes in its own education policy or the National Education Policy 2020…”

However, it remains to be seen how the Jadhav committee will re-examine the issue of introducing a third language in school education in Maharashtra in its report, which will be submitted after three months.