Push for English

Two states—Jammu and Kashmir and Nagaland—have made English the main medium of instruction in all public and private schools. More and more states, such as Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Delhi, are offering English-medium as an option in existing state schools. Private English-medium schools are a growth industry—offering a range of services to suit almost all budgets, from around Rs200 a month to Rs2 lakh a month.  This simple-minded link between job opportunities, economic success and the English language has an increasing number of urban working class and lower middle-class parents investing their hard-earned money in private English-medium schooling— often of uncertain quality.

Today, almost a quarter of all Indian children attend private schools. A significant proportion of these schools is officially English-medium. This shift, in fact, has made states like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra offer an English-medium option in existing government schools in the hope of stemming the flow of children out of state schools to private schools.

Primacy of the mother tongue

Yet, across the world, and in India, there is a consensus among educators, educationists and linguists that children learn most effectively in their mother tongues. Research collated by the UNESCO shows that “children who begin their education in their mother tongue make a better start, and continue to perform better, than those for whom school starts with a new language.”

It’s a no-brainer. Using a language that children are familiar with eases their transition from home to school. They are more easily engaged in the classroom because they understand what is going on, and are able to link it to their everyday lives. This helps them easily develop literacy skills and general cognitive abilities.

A mass of research shows that children’s ability to learn a second or even a third language improves greatly if their first language skills are well developed. And, far from being a burden, children who know one language well are very fast and receptive in learning new languages. The three-language formula for schools, which emphasised learning in the mother tongue, seemed to acknowledge this.

The transition from home language to a school language is complicated enough in a country like India where large proportions of the population do not speak the standardised regional language but a dialect or, as with many tribal communities, an entirely different language.

States with large adivasi (tribal) populations, for example, do not even have sufficient teachers who understand, never mind teach in, their languages. Starting to learn to read and write in a language that they never hear at home or in the community makes learning difficult and reduces its appeal.