SHUBHANGI SHIFA
Ranchi, Dec 27: Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC), Jharkhand State Government, in collaboration with UNICEF and Room to Read India Trust, inaugurated a state-level conference on ‘Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education’ is being organized from Dec 27 to 29.
Kiran Kumari Pasi, State Project Director, JEPC was present on the occasion as chief guest along with Dr Avinav Kumar, State Program Officer. Sunisha Ahuja, Education Specialist from UNICEF Delhi, Parul Sharma, Education Specialist from UNICEF Jharkhand; Shakti Bratasen, and Bhagyalakshmi Balaji from Room to Read were also present.
The objective of the three-day conference is to formulate a strategy and plan for ‘mother tongue-based multilingual education’ in the initial classes of government primary schools in the state to strengthen foundational literacy under the Skilled India Mission in the coming years.
During this, State Project Director Pasi emphasised the importance of mother tongue-based multilingual education for the foundation of basic education of children under the Skilled India Mission in the state.
She further explained the need to include multilingual education in elementary classes and home language education in schools. Furthermore, she highlighted the need to give and discuss with all and share their experiences and emphasised the need to work on multilingualism with children under the MTB-MLE programme.
Dr Avinav Kumar discussed in detail about multilingual situation of the state and in this context the efforts being made by JEPC in collaboration with UNICEF Jharkhand and Room to Read for multilingual education in the state under the Skilled India Mission.
In this sequence, Sunisha Ahuja, an Education Specialist at UNICEF and Shaktibrata Sen, Program Director of Room to Read highlighted the expected outcomes from this workshop over the next two days, mentioning the importance of mother tongue-based multilingual teaching.
During this, the report of ‘linguistic mapping’ conducted to understand the linguistic diversity of the entire state was also shared and suggestions based on it were discussed.
In the next two days, representatives of Room to Read, UNICEF, Chhattisgarh State, NCERT, Ranchi University, Central University and other educational institutions will share their experiences on ‘Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education’ and will work on further strategy.
Pallavi Sha, UNICEF Jharkhand, Room to Read, Suraj Pandey (State Coordinator), Shashi Kant Singh, Ravi Kumar, Suril, Piramal, Sampark Foundation, representatives of the first organization, parents and teachers participated in this conference on the first day.
