BHUBANESWAR: The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) will for the first time prepare teaching-learning materials for Kui and Desia-speaking students of Odisha. Following a directive by Union Minister for Education and Skill Development Dharmendra Pradhan, the council constituted a 10-member committee which will frame the language materials for the Kui and Desia-speaking students of the Kandha community of Koraput, Gajapati, Malkangiri and Kandhamal districts of the State. For this purpose, NCERT will work in close coordination with the Central University of Odisha (CUO) at Koraput. This is being done as per the National Education Policy (NEP)-2020 mandate.
As per the NEP, in cases where mother tongue textbook material is not available, the language of the transaction between teachers and students will still remain the mother tongue wherever possible, the NCERT said. Teachers will be encouraged to use a bilingual approach, including bilingual teaching-learning materials, with those students whose mother tongue may be different from the medium of instruction.
The 10-member committee to be headed by Prof BK Panda, project director of Centre of Excellence for Studies in Classical Odia, will have a joint director of CIET-NCERT Amarendra P Behera, linguistic Dr Mahendra Mishra, professors of CUO Rudrani Mohanty and Kapil Khemandi, RIE Principal Prakash Chandra Behera as members, among others. The Union Minister had recently visited Kotia cluster of villages in Koraput district on the occasion of ‘Utkal Day’ on April 1. During this visit, he met local students and discussed with teachers, students and parents.
He was of the opinion that the curriculum should be prepared in the mother tongue of the local students which is Kui and in the native language. The Odisha government, on the other hand, is already implementing a mother tongue-based multilingual education programme for tribal children of the state where primers (Class I and II) in 21 tribal languages are being used in schools. This includes primers in Kui and Desia languages. While Kui is a tribal language, Desia is a lingua franca in the undivided Koraput. Language experts said in many areas of the undivided Koraput, Desia has already been accepted as the first language.
According to P Patel, the lead researcher with the Academy of Tribal Languages and Culture((ATLC), the state government since 2012 is providing primers in 21 tribal languages to government schools and the revised edition of these books are being released this year. “Revised primers in Desia, Koya, Kuvi, Saura, Munda, Sadri, Gondi languages have already been published and distributed among students and those in other languages are in the press,” he said.Patel played a crucial role in the state’s multilingual education programme.