{"id":40279,"date":"2025-06-30T17:57:22","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T12:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/national-seminar-on-strengthening-multilingual-education-spotlights-the-future-of-inclusive-learning-in-india\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T17:57:22","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T12:27:22","slug":"national-seminar-on-strengthening-multilingual-education-spotlights-the-future-of-inclusive-learning-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/national-seminar-on-strengthening-multilingual-education-spotlights-the-future-of-inclusive-learning-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"National Seminar on Strengthening Multilingual Education Spotlights the Future of Inclusive Learning in India"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>New Delhi [India], June 30:\u00a0<\/strong> Language and Learning Foundation (LLF), a leading nonprofit working to strengthen foundational learning in India, recently marked a decade of impact in the education sector. Building on this milestone, LLF hosted the <strong>National Seminar on Strengthening Multilingual Education: Insights, Innovation, and the Way Forward<\/strong>\u00a0at\u00a0<strong>Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi<\/strong>. The seminar brought together education leaders, policymakers, practitioners, and development partners to explore how\u00a0<strong>Multilingual Education (MLE)<\/strong>\u00a0can drive inclusive and effective learning, particularly for children from diverse linguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds. The event underscored LLF\u2019s commitment to advancing systemic change in foundational literacy and numeracy through language-responsive teaching practices.<\/p>\n<p>The seminar opened with a compelling address by\u00a0<strong>Dr. Dhir Jhingran<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>Founder and Executive Director of LLF.\u00a0<\/strong>Reflecting on LLF\u2019s decade-long work in the foundational learning space, he said, \u201cThe most important aspect of a multilingual approach is mindset about children\u2019s first languages or local languages. We must support development of a mindset that welcomes and respects children\u2019s home languages and supports their active use in classrooms. That is the bottom line \u2013 an attitude that recognises these languages not as inferior, but as valuable and worthy of inclusion in education.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Shri Sanjay Kumar, IAS<\/strong>, Secretary, Department of School Education &amp; Literacy, Ministry of Education, delivered the keynote address. Emphasising the urgency of mainstreaming MLE, he stated, \u201cLanguage gives us identity. It\u2019s not just a means of communication\u2014it shapes how we think, feel, and connect. If a child learns one language well, they can learn any language well. That\u2019s the strength of multilingualism that our education policy must embrace.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<strong>Guest of Honour, Ms. Prachi Pandey<\/strong>, Joint Secretary (Institutions and Training), Ministry of Education, reinforced the significance of language equity \u201cIndia\u2019s linguistic diversity is a living symbol of our pluralism. When all languages are treated as equal in the classroom, we nurture not just stronger learning outcomes, but a more inclusive and cohesive society.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The seminar featured a\u00a0<strong>Special Address by Dr. Saadhna Panday<\/strong>, Chief of Education, UNICEF India, who highlighted the need for system-level change \u201cWith all the effort around multilingualism, we compromise quality if it is not well-resourced. Now we have the evidence of what works, we have great commitment from the government, and we\u2019ve built the momentum with NIPUN 1.0. India has done fantastically with NEP, with NCF, with NIPUN Bharat\u2014really emphasizing the child\u2019s home language as the medium of instruction. We need to align these fantastic policies with existing evidence and scale what works.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Gallery Walk of the MLE Material Exhibition, inaugurated by the Chief Guest and Guest of Honour, offered a vibrant showcase of multilingual teaching-learning resources developed by state governments and education partners. A key highlight was the display of innovative materials created through LLF\u2019s ongoing collaborations with states such as Assam, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Rajasthan\u2014demonstrating contextually rich, inclusive tools designed to support foundational learning in diverse linguistic settings.<\/p>\n<p>The technical sessions spotlighted powerful examples of Multilingual Education (MLE) in action, including the\u00a0<em>Neev \u2013 Multilingual Education Programme<\/em>\u00a0in Chhattisgarh and initiatives by NCERT and UNICEF. These sessions are transforming early grade classrooms into more inclusive and effective learning spaces.<\/p>\n<p>The seminar concluded with a collective reflection on the way forward, reaffirming a strong commitment to equity-led foundational learning. LLF\u2019s vision\u2014<em>\u201cA Strong Foundation, Stronger Future\u201d<\/em>\u2014was a recurring theme, with calls for stronger policy alignment and increased support from states to scale multilingual education across the country.<\/p>\n<p><strong>About Language and Learning Foundation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Language and Learning Foundation (LLF) is a system-focused and impact-driven organisation working at scale towards improving the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) outcomes of children in government primary schools in India.<\/p>\n<p>Foundational skills such as reading with comprehension, writing independently, and doing simple subtraction are gateway skills that must be acquired and mastered for all future learning in schools. The World Bank has estimated more than half the children in India at late primary age cannot read and understand grade-appropriate short sentences, also defined as learning poverty.<\/p>\n<p>Similar findings have been reported by the National Achievement Survey (NAS) and the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER). At LLF, we believe that large-scale transformation in the teaching and learning process is required to address this crisis. With the focus on learning at the bottom of the pyramid, LLF works in educationally marginalized areas where children come from families with low literacy levels, deprived social groups, and where home languages are different from school languages.<\/p>\n<p><em>If you object to the content of this press release, please notify us at pr.error.rectification@gmail.com. We will respond and rectify the situation within 24 hours.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Delhi [India], June 30:\u00a0 Language and Learning Foundation (LLF), a leading nonprofit working to strengthen foundational learning in India, recently marked a decade of impact in the education sector. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[653],"class_list":["post-40279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-education","rishi-post"],"rishi__cb_customizer_meta":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedeccanmessenger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}