Bhasha Matters: The State of the Education Report for India 2025
UNESCO released its flagship report “Bhasha Matters: The State of the Education Report for India 2025”, strongly advocating mother-tongue based instruction in India.
- The report calls for a national mission on Mother-Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) to improve equity, learning outcomes and linguistic inclusion.
Key recommendations of UNESCO (India Education Report 2025):
- Establish a coordinated national framework with strong Centre–State institutional alignment.
- Operationalise clear MTB-MLE policies adapted to local linguistic realities.
- Recruit and train teachers with multilingual competence; reform pre-service and in-service teacher education.
- Design flexible language pathways responsive to students’ linguistic backgrounds.
- Institutionalise community participation and local knowledge systems in schooling.
- Develop quality textbooks, assessments and resources in multiple languages across grades.
- Embed MTB-MLE across middle, secondary and alternative schooling with gender sensitivity.
- Use digital platforms to support multilingual teaching, learning and teacher mentoring.
- Invest in translation tools, speech technologies and AI while bridging the digital divide.
- Ensure equitable funding for multilingual education and language-responsive technologies.
