Public Policy Dilemma of Choosing the Medium of Instruction for School Education: A Case for Questioning Fallacies and Connecting Objectives

Abstract

This article focuses on the issue of the public policy choice of the medium of instruction in public schools in India, taking the high demand for English-medium school education into consideration. Building on the available literature and evidence, the article argues against the introduction of English as a singular medium of instruction in school education. The introduction of English in public and private low-cost schools is not helping children in attaining any proficiency in English. The use of English also adversely impacts their capacity to learn other subjects well. The article argues for the adoption of the translanguaging philosophy and multilingual approach to address all objectives that drive the choice of a particular medium of instruction: gaining proficiency in the said languages, ability to communicate well using those languages, using those languages to learn other subjects, making schools inclusive by including diverse home languages present in school education and enabling diverse languages to flourish by promoting their learning and usage in formal schools. This requires a reform in institutional approaches and capacity building but does not necessarily imply additional burden. Certain parts of the world have adopted these approaches successfully and learning from them. Indian states can device their own approaches taking local contexts and realities into account.

The demand for the English-medium schools has indeed gone up exponentially during recent years in India. For the lack of better data, if we roughly equate the enrolment in private unaided schools to enrolment in the English-medium schools, about one-third of the school-going children in the country are going to ‘English-medium’ schools. The share of total enrolment in private unaided schools has gone up from only 9% in 1993 to nearly 35% in 2017, while that of the government schools declined from 71% to 52% during the same period. This is partly also because of the decline in the share of enrolment in the aided schools from 20% to 11.5% in the same period (U-DISE 2019, as cited in Central Square Foundation [CSF], 2020). The aided schools are privately managed but majorly publicly funded schools, as the respective governments pay salaries for teachers. In recent years, the state governments have frozen the sanctioning of posts, leading to a decline of these schools in a number of states, as reflected in the declining share of their enrolment.

It is well known that the very genesis and growth of a good proportion of private unaided schools that have mushroomed in the last two decades rests on the lure of providing English-medium education. However, how many of these really provide English-medium education remains questionable. The data are patchy. Yet, going by the data that are available, 42.3% of private unaided schools include English as at least one of the languages taught in their schools, as opposed to 10.4% of government schools (U-DISE 2019, as cited in CSF, 2020). A four-state study showed that 57% of the children who are supposed to be going to English-medium schools were actually studying in the dominant regional language in those states, while in 18% of these schools, teachers used English books but through the dominant regional language while teaching (Lahoti & Mukhopadhyay, 2019). Further, while many parents sending their children to these schools question the quality of education, they continue to send their children hoping it would give them some social capital; aggressive marketing practices also contribute to the demand (Lahoti & Mukhopadhyay, 2019).

Apart from the fact that parents are not getting what they are choosing for in these private schools, these trends also enlarge larger public policy questions, especially about the choice of the medium of instruction for school education, in particular in government schools. Traditionally, in recognition of the high diversity in languages in different parts of India, state-funded government schools have been largely following the policy of having the main Indian language of respective state as the medium of instruction. The Right to Education, 2009, clearly mentioned adoption of mother-tongue-based education at elementary level, that is, first eight years of schooling, to the extent possible. The New Education Policy, 2020, has reinforced this position. However, in reality, a number of states are moving towards introducing English medium in government schools primarily in order to stop the flight of students from government to private schools. For instance, the Government of Andhra Pradesh (AP) introduced a choice between English or Telugu, the state’s main language, as the medium of instruction and recently wanted to make English as the compulsory medium but was stopped by the High Court. ¹ Another South Indian state, Karnataka, has started composite model schools, known as Karnataka Public School, which are English-medium schools, on an experimental basis in every taluk at sub-district level. ² These moves are apparently guided mainly by rising aspirations among all including low-income households although there are other drivers as well. For example, increasing preference for private, English-medium, school is one of the two main drivers of the negative enrolment growth rates in government schools, experienced by the southern Indian states, with the negative population growth rate being the other one. The risk of shrinking public school base would also mean narrowing of employment base for teachers, who happen to be one of the largest work-force in public service. Therefore, the public policy choice regarding the medium of instruction for school education is a real dilemma that Indian states are facing.

This article discusses the issue of choosing the medium of instruction for school education as a public policy dilemma by examining the debate in terms of its origins, drivers, arguments and their validity, with the equity in education as the guiding principle. The article then posits that the arguments for and against English as a medium of instruction comes not only from diverse positions but also from varied and more often than not, disconnected objectives leading to confused and isolated policy responses. That language is not only a medium of instruction but also a medium of communication, and a major symbol of identity, is either completely forgotten or becomes the only consideration in the policy making. That majority of schools in the country have the presence of multiple home languages is also often ignored. The policy choice in most cases remains guided by one or the other of these considerations, and therefore, misses out on addressing all linked yet very demarcated issues. The article concludes by making a case for a comprehensive and well-aligned policy on the language of learning considering various and diverse role of the language, while also acknowledging the increasing presence of multiple languages in an average Indian school.

Setting the Context

The issue of English as a medium of instruction is neither unique nor new to India. A number of post-colonial countries face this problem. The undervaluing of indigenous languages at the cost of English or the language of the colonisers has been one of the common legacies of the colonial and post-colonial societies (Milligan & Tikly, 2016). The formal and modern schooling system, established by colonial rulers in these societies brought with it the notion of ‘homogenous’ children and use of ‘singular’ language as the medium of instruction. The very conception of a modern classroom and dominant pedagogy are premised on the use of one language as the medium of instruction and presence of students with similar background and capabilities. In India, it usually meant the use of the official Indian language, which in turn was usually the numerically dominant mother tongue or the language of the local rulers, which was not even the numerically dominant mother tongue in some cases. For instance, in the princely state of Hyderabad, the medium of instruction until the 1950s was mostly Persian/Urdu, which was at odds with the mother tongue of many residents there (Jain & Suryanarayana, 2017).

While the adoption of these ‘dominant’ languages was itself alien to many for whom that was not a mother tongue and caused serious consequences, the British differed in terms of their position on the introduction of English as the medium of instruction with the East Indian officials and Missionaries at times having diverse positions (Jolad, 2020). However, English became the dominant language of higher education and played an important role in creating a class of educated Indians elites, later becoming a symbol of upward social and economic mobility. This got reinforced in the post-globalization era where proficiency in English became synonymous with both: the upward mobility of an individual and economic development of the low-income economies.

The emergence of ‘English as the Global Lingua Franca’ is linked with emergence of Information Technology, globalized trade and services, and a high degree of inter-dependent world economy (Smokotin et al., 2014). In this process, English has also replaced many other European languages, which used to be the main foreign language in a number of post-colonial societies, for example, a number of former French colonies are now shifting towards adopting English as the main foreign language (Crystal, 2003). The emergence of a strong service-sector-based high economic growth rate during the 1990s and early 2000s in India is deeply linked with the process of globalization. Therefore, the high demand for English-medium education in the country in the post-globalization era is also obviously linked with the opening up of the economy.

In this context, it becomes imperative for the state to act and respond, and therefore the state governments in India who are responsible for determining the policy regarding the medium of instruction have to act, and act in a manner that school education succeeds in imparting high-quality education to students from all sections of society including diverse linguistic backgrounds while being responsive to people’s aspirations as well. This is where the dilemma starts, as most of the existing knowledge base clearly points towards the use of mother tongue as the medium of instruction as being most effective choice, while that seems to be conflicting with the possibility of realizing people’s language-related aspirations. This dilemma, however, can be resolved if the decision is based on a more nuanced understanding of language both as a medium of learning and communication and as an important symbol of personal and cultural identity. The discourse in India needs to go beyond English medium education, as English is not the only ‘foreign’ language that students are made to deal with; the dominant state language can also be as foreign to many in a classroom, depending upon where the school is located and where the pupils are coming from. In order to understand this, I next move to answer three questions: (a) What happens when English medium is introduced in schools where most children come from non-English environment? (b) Is the dominant state language-based education the best solution? and (c) What is the solution, if these two are not?

What Happens When English Medium Is Introduced in Schools Where Most Children Come from a Non-English Environment?

Research evidence from diverse country and sub-country contexts have shown that English-medium instruction acts as a barrier for students coming from communities where English is not spoken at home or outside of school (Brock-Utne, 2012). Evidence from India is limited and mostly focuses on learning outcomes of public and private schools, which cannot always be equated as Indian language or English medium, and hence needs a cautious approach to interpretation. The narrow focus on learning outcomes alone also makes it difficult to understand the entire gamut of students’ or teachers’ experiences; however, it is still worth examining what this discourse tells us. What emerges there is that in general, though not always, the average learning outcome scores are higher for private schools in comparison to those for public schools, this difference either narrows down or dissipates once the filter of socio-economic background is used (Muralidharan & Sundararaman, 2015). Language plays a role in low levels of learning for other subjects, as that is the means for learning those as well. A recent research in India and Ghana on English teaching published by British Council clearly states that the exclusive use of English in the classroom leads to ‘silencing’ of students and is a main contributor to low level of learning outcomes. ³

Moreover, any kind of proficiency in English remains highly doubtful. Majority of the private school goers from the low-income families in India go to low-cost unaided private schools, which is what has contributed to the high growth in recent past. Evidence from a number of states show that though parental choice of low-cost private schools is indeed guided by aspirations that their children should acquire a ‘smattering of English’ and also having ‘proper dress and behaviour’, the reality for most such children is that they are not being taught in English (Lahoti & Mukhopadhyay, 2019, pp. 51–52). Evidence also shows that many parents continue to send their children to these schools even after realizing that what they aspired for is not happening because they still feel the stamp of English-medium education itself would give them the cultural capital that they otherwise lack (Lahoti & Mukhopadhyay, 2019).

The issue of medium of instruction is important not only to attain proficiency in that language but also because that is going to be the language of learning for other subjects, and therefore determines the accessibility to content and competency for other subjects as well. The United Nations estimates that nearly 40% of the global population does not have access to education in a language they understand or speak (UNESCO, 2016), and this definitely limits their access to and capability of learning that language as well as other subjects through that language. Evidence from India shows that the use of English medium could have had negative impact on the learning of both their own native language as well as other subjects such as Mathematics (Muralidharan, 2019).

The evidence from a few public schools in AP which has introduced the English medium alongside the state language, Telugu, also indicates towards both overt and subtle discrimination against Telugu medium students who often sit together with English-medium students in a classroom, as most schools do not have either enough physical resources or teachers to organize separate classroom for these two groups (Centre for Budget and Policy Studies [CBPS], 2021). A clear selection bias exists, where children with better perceived abilities are diverted to English medium and others, who are also often poorer, to Telugu medium, which itself becomes a predictor of later learning attainments. Also, teachers are also too quick to label Telugu-medium students into dullards and slow learners openly in front of their peers when they do not answer a question in the classroom (CBPS, 2021). That these kinds of comparisons in language-based learning capacities could also be disrespectful and humiliating, leading to the child rejecting the choice for schooling completely, perhaps does not enter into the teacher’s psyche, as these are rarely part of any training that they have received (CBPS, 2021).

Language is not only a medium of learning but also an intrinsic part of one’s identity, and decisions about languages to teach and use as part of formal schooling not only directly impact educational outcomes but also create implicit messages about whether students’ heritages and identities are welcome and capable of succeeding at school (Reynolds, 2019). It obviously is also reflective of and reinforces the power hierarchy of languages where restricting language use in the classroom to one language or another stigmatizes those languages that are disallowed in addition to forcing students to suppress from expressing what they know (Reynolds, 2019). It is now well-researched and well-known that focus on exclusive use of only one language of instruction in the classroom can impact good pedagogical practices adversely, especially because it limits children’s understanding and participation.

Does that mean that in India, continuation or introduction of the respective state’s official language as the uniform medium of instruction is the most desired solution? The answer is in negative. The next discusses why this answer is negative.

Is the Dominant State Language-based Education the Best Solution?

The states in India do not necessarily or fully represent the linguistic divides or diversities, especially during the British period. The 1956 reorganization of Indian states on linguistic lines could also address this only partially. A district-wise analysis of colonial provinces that consisted of some districts where the official language matched the district’s language and some where it did not clearly show that the ‘linguistically mismatched districts have 18.0% lower literacy rates and 20.1% lower college graduation rates, driven by difficulty in acquiring education due to a different medium of instruction in schools’ (Jain, 2016). This establishes that the use of dominant state language in the entire state is indeed not a solution. This is something that even the nationalist movement did not necessarily address it. Those who constituted the nationalist movement were divided in their positions on English education and they predominantly opposed the introduction of English as a medium of instruction for school education (Bhattacharya et al., 2003). However, this debate often ignored the role of dominant Indian language also contributing to the exclusion from education, as asserted by some scholars:

while the national education movement contested imperial cultural hegemonies, the nationalist critique did not turn inwards to question hegemonies internal to Indian civil society. The inequalities inherent in indigenous society in terms of privileges / deprivileges in access to education in particular were reinstated and reinforced by the colonial educational system’ (Bhattacharya et al., 2003, pp. xvi–xvii).

Given the development model that we have chosen has induced high level of internal and international migration, and no society has remined non-porous. In addition to voluntary cross-border migration, natural and man-made disasters including conflict or war cause large-scale displacement and forced migration. The Migration Data Portal estimates that in 2017, 30 million children lived in countries where they were not born, an additional 28 million children were estimated to have been part of forced displacement, which did not include 7 million children internally displaced by natural disasters. ⁴ In India, rural–urban migration, within the state boundaries as well as inter-state migration has been a major phenomenon, where both single male migration and family migration are common occurrences: they usually move from low-developed regions to high-developed regions in search of livelihood and also at times for higher income and better facilities. Conflict and disasters have also caused families to move from one area to the other within the country. There is no definite data on number of children living or going to schools where their own home language is not used but a good body of evidence exists on marginalization of children not well-versed with the respective mainstream languages in their schools, which not only impair their learning but also make them feel disrespected leading to alienation (Jhingran, 2009; Nambissan, 1994).

Despite the fact that India is home to 19,569 mother tongues and 121 languages that are spoken by more than 10,000 people (Census of India, 2011), more than 98% schools in the country are single-medium schools (Nambissan, 1994). English is not the only language that can marginalize other languages; there is a hierarchy of languages existing even among Indian languages, where a number of minor and tribal languages face similar subjugation from more powerful official languages. India has 22 official languages and the Santhali, the only tribal language there, became a part of the list as late as in 2004. When certain languages are declared official and used as standard languages as a medium to teach and learn, other languages naturally move down the line in the hierarchy and power, considered ‘not-standard’ and therefore not good enough. What was true at the time of national movement in terms of education has remained more or less true even later, in the case of languages: the inequalities inherent in indigenous society and languages remained reinstated and reinforced.

An interesting fact is that though these dominant official languages are also hegemonic to smaller languages, some of the policy measures regarding strict use of state languages in some states is also linked with the fear of the main state language getting wiped out or undervalued due to the power and lure of English, and also for fear of losing out to Hindi, the third most spoken language of the world the lingua franca for majority of Indians. ⁵ Although only one among the 22 official Indian languages, the dominance of Hindi comes from the sheer number of speakers and this being one of the two official Government of India’s languages, the other being English. The fear of losing their language, and through that also culture and identity is not entirely misplaced considering that thousands of languages have by now been lost to English and other dominant languages of power in colonial era across continents including Africa, Asia and Pacific. ⁶

This has at times resulted in what appears to be polarized conflict between those who support adoption or retention of state languages as the only medium of instruction and those who view this as a ploy to stop traditionally deprived communities from aspiring for social and economic mobility through adoption of English as the language of learning. For instance, the opposition to the conversion of Kannada-medium schools to English-medium schools in Karnataka came largely from Kannada writers and a community of scholars who argued for preserving and nurturing the language, culture and identity of Kannada by retaining it as a medium of instruction, whereas a number of Dalit groups, who have traditionally been out of all forms of formal schooling, supported the move in Karnataka as well as in AP. ⁷ That it is not necessary to have only one language as the language of learning has hardly found a place in this discourse.

State language is also often seen as unifying tool and that too plays a role in its adoption as the medium of instruction. As a result, smaller languages, and especially those that associated with migrants, minorities and tribals, are largely excluded from schools also because they are perceived as a threat to national (Reynolds, 2019) or a sub-national identity. This obviously privileges languages of power, especially in a linguistically diversified country like India. In Indian context, the relative positioning of languages also changes with the location, as what is most powerful in one location becomes a minority language in another. However, in every situation, the hierarchy remains and those at the bottom belong to those who are otherwise also powerless: migrants, lower caste, minority communities, etc. Exclusion of their languages from the learning processes not only adversely impacts their capability to learn well but it also alienates them further. At the same time, it is also important to protect state languages and enable those to flourish as they are also facing subjugation from other more hegemonic languages such as English. But then the question arises regarding what the solution is; how to ensure presence of multiple languages in a classroom and how to ensure high levels of learning for all. This is what I discuss in the next section.

What Is the Solution If These Two Are Not?

One of the first requirements of looking for an alternate to the singular language of learning approach is to acknowledge that India is a linguistically diverse country, and with high migration and movement, more and more locations are increasingly turning into multilingual societies. This is going to happen only when certain arguments in the language debate are discussed and proved to be fallacious. Some of these fallacies include: ‘English medium education is the only way for learning English language’, ‘English medium education is also high-quality education’, ‘Learning English right from very early years is the only way to achieve proficiency in English’, ‘Local languages cannot be the language of higher learning’, ‘Indian languages can be preserved only by making it a compulsory medium of instruction in state schools and entry of other languages would dilute its importance’, ‘A state language is the home language or mother tongue of all residents in that state’, ‘Medium of instruction is just a language of learning—it has nothing to do with identity and culture’. These are some of the frequently cited arguments on two sides but there could be more. I will return to examine these to argue why these are fallacious arguments a little later, after first arguing for thinking differently and looking at recent innovations in language learning that use the presence of children from diverse languages as a resource rather than a burden:

Translanguaging, a pedagogical approach that accepts the dynamic use of resources from multiple languages as a normal form of communication for multilinguals has emerged as a way of building new resources from the resources brought to the classroom by diverse students. (Reynolds, 2019, pp. xii)

Translanguaging is common to multilingual societies where people move from one language to another with ease, in both formal and informal situations. For example, in the northern part of India, it is common for people to use English and Hindi in both formal meetings and informal conversations in the universities and among educated lot. Similarly, in southern states, moving between the main Indian language, for example, Tamil or Kannada or Telugu or Marathi to English or even Hindi in some contexts. This allows people to bring in language-specific resources, for example, a saying or proverb that cannot be easily translated, apart from making the conversation easier to connect with for everyone. There have been successful cases of adopting this approach in the classroom in the shape of a multilingual classroom in certain parts of the globe including in some parts of India. Multilingual education or MLE has been tried in Odisha and some parts of Chhattisgarh in tribal contexts, recognizing the presence of a large number of tribal languages in the same schools with positive impact on reducing dropouts and enhanced learning levels (Mishra, 2009). Odisha has followed an approach where tribal mother tongues are allowed to be used in primary years, while Odiya, the main language of the state, is slowly used as a language with well planned for transition. Tribal areas are, of course, live examples of multilingual contexts, but increasingly almost all urban areas are also increasingly multilingual where this approach can be useful not only in making children feel respected and connected but also prepare them to face a multilingual world later in their lives from a position of strength.

A multilingual classroom is different from teaching more than one language, though they are interconnected. Multilingual teaching or translanguaging refers to the use of more than one language for teaching a subject, the choice of these languages obviously coming from the pool of mother tongues and home languages that students bring in. It also becomes important to realize that the approach to the use of language needs to be different in a multilingual classroom: respecting and negotiating difference becomes important here (Canagarajah, 2009). Introduction of more than one language for translanguaging as well as teaching even as subjects requires a careful selection and well-planned teacher preparation along with the presence of resources that they can use. However, it is important to realize that this approach has to be organically built where teachers also develop an understanding of children’s contexts and culture, and it is not adopted as merely based on a dictionary. This is indeed challenging, especially in the context of rigid bureaucracies that control the public education system, and therefore needs detailed institutional and process planning for the policy reform; otherwise, the results could be less than optimal (Mohanty, 2017).

Although challenging, bringing in multiple languages in school education is not necessarily an additional burden, if it is accompanied by a shift in perspective from viewing languages as competing to viewing languages as collaborative. Scholars argue that focusing only on specific properties or rules of one language makes one assume that learning of any additional language is a burden on cognitive capacity but this changes when language is perceived as a collection of resources. Teaching multiple languages need not be a great burden if one realizes that this can actually be beneficial to both or more languages (García & Wei, 2014; Reynolds, 2019)

Let us try to imagine practising this approach in a school in AP where currently English- and Telugu-medium students are separately marked and treated, thereby creating a hierarchy where the latter are labelled as dullard and slow learner easily. Suppose all are considered bilingual, and teachers use both English and Telugu as resources and encourage students to speak and engage in whichever language they want to while also teaching them nuances of each of these expressions using students’ expressions and knowledge as well, and therefore teaching them both the languages also in the process. The class could become cooperative without being competitive and could also break the hierarchy of language. In this process, if students also join with a third home language, say Kannada or Hindi, then there is scope for including that as well without being hostile but by accommodating dynamic needs of the school. Once both teachers and children get trained in being inclusive, it becomes easier to open doors to newer languages. In this process, schools also need to decide how many languages they are going to teach formally in addition to allow the use of mother tongues along with formal languages. Although more than one language can be accommodated in a classroom, formal language teaching has to be limited to a few and how one chooses those also reflects the policy priority.

A brief discussion on learning from international experiences may be relevant here. While international examples are illustrative of the rationale and experiences that can help other countries in making public policy choices, these also always carry a risk of transplanting a policy not only from a different cultural context but also with vastly different thresholds of literacy, income levels and scale. For instance, some of Indian states have been guided by the English-based bilingual system in Singapore where all state schools use English as the medium of instruction with the choice of second language dependent on parental ethnicity. The fact that Singapore is a small country of 5.7 million population with the second highest per capita income in the world, 98% literacy rate and only four major ethnicities are often forgotten while promoting the same policy for Indian states. On the other hand, it is important to look at the experience from the perspective of their respect for ethnic languages while recognizing the need for English education and then adopting the policy, depending on what was best suited for us, looking at our parameters that define the pre-conditions for the success of a policy. We are dealing with a population which largely comes from illiterate, semiliterate, barely literate backgrounds, with very limited access to written resources in any language and also with very little household income. That makes the Singapore approach unsuitable for us. We may learn more by looking at an example like that in Ottawa in Canada.

The state of Ottawa in Canada follows a policy for two official languages, English and French, and also promotes teaching of other mother tongues based on demand, by organizing classroom teaching as well as community teaching through weekend classes using public fund and community teachers. These are credit courses at both elementary and secondary levels and accommodate 20–30 language teaching at two stages of schooling. In this way, the state supports the retention and promotion of a large number of mother tongues and also creates an atmosphere of respect and social cohesion. This can be viewed as a multi-competence perspective, which recognizes some linguistic knowledge as specific to particular languages and other knowledge as common to multiple languages (Reynolds, 2019).

This also proves that the presence of multiple languages in the schooling system is possible if we start recognizing the community brining multiple languages as a resource. It also breaks the barrier between standard and non-standard, while teaching two main languages and using one of the two as the main medium of instruction at later stages. It is not necessary to adopt any model as is, but it is important to acknowledge the possibility, understand the concept and then adopt/adapt a suitable policy while building institutional processes and capacity building of teachers/school management to ensure its success. A good body of literature exists on these choices, of course coming from diverse contexts, but addressing the issue of teaching mainstream languages and through those such as English to a group of children for whom it is not a native language and arguing that many of these language systems are interdependent (e.g., see Cummins, 2008a, 2008b).

Returning back to fallacies, we can see that many of those break down if we adopt this approach. However, once we recognize the importance of adopting a multilingual approach, four main challenges emerge: (a) how to teach multiple languages to young children, (b) how to incorporate languages for which we do not have adequate textbooks, reading materials and other resources including teachers, (c) how to ensure proficiency in English and other languages of ‘power’ to respond to people’s aspirations and (d) how to convince both parents on one side and policy planners on the other that the introduction of the multiple language approach would not threaten learning of either the main state language or English. While the first two can find an answer from the literature and country or sub-national experiences by taking this forward through a rigorous and consultative approach, the third one is the most challenging. Although a misconception, the belief that the best way to learn English is to use it as a medium of instruction is all pervasive (Brock-Utne, 2012). This brings us to the issue of public opinion and communications.

It is very much possible to communicate and convince people if the multilingual approach is adopted by the public schooling system in all seriousness, and it shows results in children’s sense of belonging to the school and their learning. Research has also shown that parents choose the first available English medium in the absence of any other effective option (Lahoti & Mukhopadhyay, 2019). Also, developing a communication approach, as is necessary for policy interventions such as breaking the vaccine hesitancy, may be needed to communicate that multilingual education will help children learn all the languages and subjects better. However, most important will be to have a binding policy for all kinds of schools so that upper middle and elite schools also adopt similar approaches—that may even have a trendsetting impact on other schools apart from breaking the duality in the approaches. If parents are also part of this approach for promoting their language in schools, they would feel valued and also see the value of this approach. Translangauging is very common in India in informal contexts, and it is time to extend that as a well-developed approach to school education to find solution for the presence of multilingual mother tongues in the classroom and aspiration as well as the need for learning English for social and economic mobility. Also, research suggests that using a dominant language through a school system in multi-ethnic societies could lead to wider issues of social and cultural inequality (UNESCO, 2016), and therefore the adoption of the multilingual approach can also play a role in avoiding such conflicts.

The multilingual education approach for school education can also bring together four diverse and disconnected objectives that currently influence the public policy choice of the language of learning: helping children gain proficiency in English, promoting national and state languages, respecting all other minor languages and finally raising the level of learning. Once, learning of a number of languages is part of the formal system, and all children feel welcome, it weakens the power-based hierarchy of languages and leads way to a collaborative approach that addresses all of these concerns together rather than making them stand in opposition to each other. This resolves the public policy dilemma of choosing a singular medium of instruction. That this approach cannot and should not be adopted without adequate preparation about the details, keeping all foreseeable barriers is important for all reforms, goes without saying. But this is one reform that has the potential for addressing multiple concerns of school education in India, and it is time to bring the discourse centre stage and act on that without much delay.