Use of mother tongue in foundational education, now and earlier

This latest push for the use of mother tongue comes after repeated, unequivocal policy articulations in its favour at the highest levels of the Union government, including from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.

What has the new NCF recommended?

According to the NCF, evidence from research confirms the importance of teaching children in their mother tongue during the foundational years and beyond.
“Since children learn concepts most rapidly and deeply in their home language, the primary medium of instruction would optimally be the child’s home language/ mother tongue/ familiar language in the Foundational Stage,” it states.

English, the NCF has observed, can be one of the second languages taught at that level.

What is the immediate, practical import of this recommendation?

At the national level, in schools affiliated to the CBSE or ICSE, English is the main medium of instruction from the primary classes itself. That has been the case despite efforts to get the boards to adopt the mother tongue or dominant regional languages at least for the primary grades. Neither of these boards has so far signalled any possible revision in the current arrangement.

Most state boards, meanwhile, have their regional languages as the main mode of instruction. However, every state government also runs schools in which English is the medium of instruction. In fact, the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana governments have taken policy decisions to gradually get all schools to impart education only in English. This had triggered a debate, which could well revive now in the light of the new NCF.

What did previous education policies recommend?

The first education policy, which was based on the recommendations of a commission headed by the former chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC), Dr D S Kothari, observed that regional languages were already in use as the medium of education at the primary and secondary stages, and steps should be taken to adopt the same at the university stage as well.

The recommendations did not contain any specific instruction on mother tongue, but underlined that “special emphasis should be laid on the study of English and other languages”.

The second education policy, introduced in 1986, too was silent on the use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction at the foundational stage. However, the 1992 Programme of Action, which was based on a review of the 1986 policy, said that at the pre-school level, the medium of communication should be mother tongue/ regional language.

The new National Education Policy (NEP), which was introduced in 2020, marked a departure from the past, as it made a clear case for mother tongue. “Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/ mother tongue/ local language/ regional language,” the NEP said.

And what about the previous NCFs?

The NCFs are detailed guidelines based on which school syllabi undergo revisions. In the NCFs, the role of the mother tongue has been specified more clearly from the beginning.

The first NCF, which was published in 1975, said clearly that “so far as possible, primary education should be in the mother tongue”, which was the child’s “most natural medium of communication”.

In the case of learners whose mother tongue was also the language of the region, the medium of instruction at the elementary and secondary stages should be the regional language, it said — and in cases where they were different, the mother tongue should be the medium in the first two years of primary education, and the regional language should then take over.

The NCF 2000 pronounced emphatically: “The medium of instruction, ideally, ought to be the mother tongue at all the stages of school education.”

NCF 2005 said the language of interaction and communication in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) would “normally be the child’s ‘first’ language, or home language”. It added, however, that in the light of socio-political realities, English has to be introduced early as a second language, either in Class I or at the preschool level.

What is the Constitutional position on this issue?

Under Article 350A of the Constitution, the government must try to ensure that children from linguistic minority groups are educated in their mother tongue.

The provision (“Facilities for instruction in mother-tongue at primary stage”) reads: “It shall be the endeavour of every State and of every local authority within the State to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother-tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups; and the President may issue such directions to any State as he considers necessary or proper for securing the provision of such facilities.”

Article 351 says “It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India and to secure its enrichment by assimilating without interfering with its genius, the forms, style and expressions used in Hindustani and in the other languages…specified in the Eighth Schedule…”