In a technical sense CBSE is the oldest secondary education board in India. The board traces back to 1929, when it was set up as the Board of High School and Intermediate Education in Rajputana. Even before that, the U.P. Board of High School and Intermediate Education had been instituted in 1921, and in many ways CBSE is the offshoot of that earlier U.P. board. It was renamed the Central Board of Secondary Education in 1952 and reconstituted in 1962 to serve the children of central government employees with transferable jobs. So we are talking about an institution that has been at this work for close to a century.
It is also probably the largest school education board of its kind anywhere in the world. As per CBSE's own data, by June 2024 the board had 29,340 schools in India and 257 schools in 25 foreign countries. Inside that number sit 1,247 Kendriya Vidyalayas, 648 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, 5,280 government and aided schools (which include the Delhi government schools, several Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas, and Morarji Desai residential schools that have CBSE affiliation), 14 Central Tibetan Schools, and 22,408 independent schools. There are 18 regional offices spread across the country, plus one in Dubai. The board reaches into rural blocks, small towns and metros, and across the border into the Gulf, Southeast Asia and beyond. Behind those schools sit lakhs of teachers and non-teaching staff. I am laying out the numbers because they explain reach and scope the critics keep ignoring.
Now coming to the internal linguistic structure of the CBSE board. The teachers in CBSE schools are multilingual, so are the students. Often, the non-teaching staffs are also multilingual. Textbooks and courses pass through several languages too. Honestly, no other Indian board comes close on linguistic diversity as much as CBSE, whether you measure it by the students, by the teachers, by the non-teaching staffs or by the textbooks they read. Therefore, diversity, linguistic or otherwise, is every day’s situation and functioning of the CBSE board.
One of the reasons for this scale of diversity within CBSE’s internal structure comes from the simple fact that many parents in central government have transferable jobs. Private sector families, also relocate in numbers. When these migrant parents bring their children into schools where the local language is different from what is spoken at home, a board that has been catering to this kind of population for decades cannot afford to favour any one prominent language and ignore the rest. It has to look for each and every Indian language and that is why CBSE has already built up a pool of 45 languages, which includes all 22 scheduled languages of our constitution.
This is also why CBSE schools have become aspirational throughout the nation. State secondary boards often watch what CBSE does and, probably follow. So, when CBSE decides on a threelanguage policy, it signals to the whole country.
Now to the policy itself. Under CBSE's three-language framework, students study three languages, called R1, R2 and R3, and at least two of them must be native Indian languages. The framework aligns with the National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023 and the National Education Policy 2020. From July 1, 2026, Class 9 students start learning languages under this structure, whereas Class 6 is already moving. R3 textbooks in 19 scheduled languages are being made available, and for the remaining Indian languages, schools can use SCERT text material. And importantly, there is no board exam for R3 at the Class 10 level during this transitional period. The assessment is school-based and internal. So the panic that the third language is going to wreck a child's board exam is, factually, just wrong.
I would call this a historic decision. The beginning of a new era for Indian school education. Not because three languages instead of two is magical on its own, but because of who is implementing it and how. CBSE has the faculty, the resources, the planning culture and the experience to roll something like this out in phases. The board is doing exactly that, with a phased rollout, flexibility for smaller schools, and permission to use Sahodaya cluster sharing and retired teachers during the transition.
Now to the bit that those shouting about Hindi imposition. Honestly, I find that argument imaginary and inconsequential. A lot of it is also politically motivated. If you actually read the policy, and look at the nature and character of CBSE, the 45 languages it already offers, and the country we live in, there is no imposition of any language till date. The policy offers all the languages and any student can take any language. Nowhere is it written that students have to take a particular language under R1, R2 or R3. Any language can be taken. So this Hindi imposition charge is a false blame.
Take Tamil Nadu. The state has had a two-language policy for decades. That was a political choice. But here is what I keep coming back to that is a child has an inherent capacity to learn many languages. Anyone who has watched kids grow up in a bilingual or multilingual home has seen it. Studies suggest that when someone learns more languages, their brain functions accordingly and they get more cognitive power or a diverse worldview. So why on earth would you cap a child at two when they are capable of more? In my view, it is vested interest hampering students' future and doing them a great injustice.
There is another thing the two-language defenders quietly leave out. When you study just two languages, typically your state language and English, your mother tongue mostly gets lost in the deal. Under the three-language formula you will prefer to bring your mother tongue back. You can study your mother tongue, then your state language, then a third of your choice. Or any two Indian languages of your choice plus an R3. That is the structure. No other board in the world provides this kind of linguistic choice that caters to every linguistic area of the country, with equal opportunity for everyone.
For students, this policy makes them capable, future-ready, interstate-ready, and ready for the kind of work-and-travel lives most middle-class Indian families now lead. Look at our cities, like Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Gurugram and even tier-2 and tier-3 cities have become very diverse in terms of languages. Students arrive from every part of India, including from smaller states. So if a child in Chennai learns Hindi or Bengali, or a child in Lucknow learns Gujarati, Tamil or Kannada, they understand their classmates better and later their colleagues. Think about it this way, if a language is a door, then when you open one door, some knowledge walks in, but when you open three doors, the inflow is roughly three times greater.
That is why I welcome the three-language policy in its current avatar.
(Views are personal)
The writer is Padma Shri Awardee, Chairman, Bhartiya Bhasha Samiti