Limited use of the language used at home to help children comprehend and participate in class, ‘multigrade’ classrooms with students from more than one grade in a room, and limited use of teaching-learning material are among the challenges flagged by a survey on teaching-learning practices in classes 1 and 2 across nine states.
While 73 per cent of the teachers knew the languages used by the children at home, only around 10 per cent used them consistently to enhance children’s participation and comprehension, showed the findings of the Teaching Learning Practices Survey, which covered 1,050 classrooms in government schools across the nine states of Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya, Assam, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Chhattisgarh.
The survey, conducted in the 2024-25 academic year, was anchored by Language and Learning Foundation, a non-profit organisation working on foundational literacy and numeracy, and was supported by Tata Trusts.
Teachers ‘discouraged’ use of ‘home language’ Around 61 per cent of teachers did not use the ‘home language’ in teaching and “in some cases, even discouraged, corrected, or reprimanded children for using them,” going by the survey, which notes that using the home language in early schooling is essential for building strong foundations in learning. When a familiar language is used in the classroom, children understand better, are able to express ideas, ask questions, and connect new concepts to what they already know, it stated.
Around one-fourth of teachers reported that children struggled to understand the medium of instruction.
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) 2023 call for the use of the mother tongue in the early years of schooling, especially up to the age of 8. Earlier this year, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had asked affiliated schools to begin implementing this.
‘Teachers in multigrade settings need specific guidance’ The survey also pointed to ‘multigrade teaching situations’, where children of two or more grades were sitting together, having been found in 66 per cent or 693 of the 1,050 schools that were surveyed. “Despite this, most curricula, teacher guides, and training programmes continue to assume single-grade and monolingual classrooms. Teachers working in multigrade settings need specific curricular guidance and pedagogical tools to manage multiple groups effectively,” the survey noted.
The NCFSE calls for the use of teaching-learning material that can engage students in activities like toys, audio-visual material, cut-outs of shapes or straw models.
The survey found that in 53 per cent of classrooms, the children did not use the teach-learning material (TLM) at all. “These findings suggest a need to shift from infrequent or teacher-led use of TLMs towards more consistent, child-centred engagement…,” the survey noted.
The findings are significant considering the NEP’s thrust on basic literacy and numeracy. NIPUN Bharat, the Centre’s national mission launched in 2021, has a goal of ensuring Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) for all children by the end of grade 3 by 2026-27. The mission also emphasises on the development and availability of teaching-learning material in schools.
“The survey findings indicate that although many states have taken important steps to prioritise FLN, consistent improvements in classroom practices have yet to take firm root at scale,” the survey noted, recommending that the policy support for FLN continue beyond the current time frame of 2026-27, and that the focus for consolidation of foundational skills extend to grades 3 to 5.
‘Changes will take time’ Referring to the need for a survey like this one, Dhir Jhingran, founder and executive director at Language and Learning Foundation, pointed out that there has been a focus on student learning outcomes and assessments, but there has not been that much focus nationally on what happens inside early-grade classrooms for foundational learning.
Sanjay Kumar, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy in the Union Education Ministry, said at the launch of the survey on Monday: “There are schools which have multigrade classes. In one room, there’s more than one class… I don’t know to what extent I can teach somebody in a classroom where there are three classes and in that, there are children of multiple learning levels.”
“That is the challenge of the Indian schooling system. How do I get out of that… I might say add some classrooms, make all multigrade classrooms single-grade…but that’s going to take time. It is going to cost money. This is the complexity…,” he added.
Referring to the survey findings that in 53 per cent of classrooms, children did not use TLMs at all, he said: “We need to sit down together and find out what is happening, because this is something that is serious.”