Webinar 20 May 2026 Dhir Jhingran and Smriti Mishra

Policy Helps, Practice Hesitates: The Implementation Gap in Multilingual Education More than 20 Indian languages are used as languages of instruction (LoI) in government schools through the secondary stage (Grade 12). Around 25 more are used as LoIs in primary education. Given India's huge linguistic and cultural diversity, there are many languages that are not formally included in school education. The last Census in India identified 121 languages that had more than 10,000 speakers and a very large number of additional mother tongues. India's education policies over the past decades have supported the use of children's mother languages in formal education, particularly with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curricular Framework for School Education 2023. However, the policy mandates qualify these provisions with clauses like “as far as possible.” As a consequence, governments and academic institutions responsible for implementation of these policies have interpreted mother tongue mandates differently. This has led to significant variance in implementation across different geographical areas due to system constraints and other issues. This talk explores the factors that shape this variance as well as deliberate strategies on how this gap can be mitigated. We will examine the key factors contributing to this implementation gap and highlight emerging lessons from the field. We will also explore practical pathways to strengthen alignment between policy and practice, with a focus on scalable, context-responsive strategies for advancing multilingual education in diverse settings.