The scope of education for the 1.4 million young tribal children in the State is at stake as any law for mother tongue-based early childhood education is yet to come,” said Odisha Adivasi Manch members.
They were participating in a State-level editors’ meet on ‘Mother tongue (MT)-based multilingual early childhood education for tribal children in Odisha’ organised by the People’s Rural Education Movement
(PREM) and Bernard van leer Foundation here on Tuesday. The experts urged the State Government to fully implement the decision taken by the Chief Secretary
on July 31 last year to introduce mother tongue-based multilingual education for tribal children. They also appealed to the Government to develop curriculum in 19 tribal languages instead of 10 to cover all the tribal children of the State.
India Representative of Bernard van leer Foundation Dharitri Patnaik said the State Government has recently directed for implementation of mother tongue-based education in primary and upper primary education in 10 major tribal languages.
But the goal of a policy in this context is still missing and the tribal population is still deprived of basic education need and the dropout
rates are increasing. The Government should speed up the process for a State law to bring MT-based education in practice.
Dr Ajit Mohanty from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, a well-known researcher on mother-tongue based education, said that due to lack of MT-based education in tribal areas, out of 100 children joining Class I, only 20 appear at the High School Certificate (HSC) examinations and only nine students pass the examinations. It leads to capability deprivation and poverty, he observed.
Mohanty said that children learn better in their own languages as it regulates their thought process.
PREM director Jacob Thundyl said Odisha is the first State in the country to publish a notification to implement MT-based multilingual early childhood education for tribal children.
PREM has been running centres at 350 tribal villages in the State to teach tribal students in their mother tongue from two to six years.