NCERT Plans Master’s programme to train teachers in multiple languages

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is developing a multilingual education programme under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. It would train teachers to teach more than one language. The plan is still at the proposal stage.

At the centre of the plan is a Master’s programme in Multilingual Education. It is expected to prepare a new group of teachers specialising in applied linguistics and multilingual pedagogy. Language teachers are generally trained in a single language, but this model would prepare them to teach several, possibly combining regional Indian languages with foreign ones.

The aim is to let schools widen the range of languages they offer without hiring a separate teacher for each. The details are still being worked out. NCERT and ministry officials have yet to decide how many languages a teacher could be trained to teach and what level of proficiency would be required in each.

The programme is meant to do more than produce teachers who speak several languages. It would check whether educators have the academic grounding and classroom skills to teach those languages well.

Traditional language training leans heavily on literary studies, including poetry, drama and the history of a language. The proposed approach would shift the focus to applied linguistics and multilingual teaching methods. Training could cover grammar acquisition, phonetics, language structure and how languages are learned, alongside classroom pedagogy. The goal is to help students build practical skills in speaking, writing and comprehension rather than concentrating mainly on literary analysis.