Why UNESCO Is Urging India to Teach Children in Their Mother Tongue
The annual India Education Report for 2025 by UNESCO carries a very obvious message. India is requested by UNESCO to emphasize teaching children in their mother tongue or home language in the schools throughout the country. The document claims that such a method strengthens learning, supports linguistic diversity, and makes education more accessible to all students.
The publication is titled Bhasha Matters: The State of the Education Report for India 2025; Mother Tongue and Multilingual Education. It spans 165 pages and offers data from schools and the communities covered by the research in different Indian states where mother-tongue instruction has been implemented. The UNESCO executives launched it in their Delhi office on 17 December 2025.
The appeal of the international organization is based on research over the years that have came to the same conclusion: children learn best when their instruction is in a language they already know. Learners who are given their first education in a language that is also their home language tend to grasp the essential concepts more thoroughly, achieving higher grades, and are more likely to continue their studies. The Report observes that multilingual education may have the effect of dropout reduction and enhancing the general learning level of students.
According to the Regional Director of the UNESCO office for South Asia, Tim Curtis, the organisation supported the mother-tongue based approach even in its earliest period. He considered that besides the aspect of social integration, multilingual education also contributes to the conservation of the Indian linguistic heritage which is very diverse in terms of the regional differences. The report departs from the experiences of the teachers, experts in education, leaders in the community, and students from such states as Odisha, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh.
Besides being a change plea, the UNESCO report goes further to provide ten definite proposals to Indian policy-makers. These proposals are such as ensuring a clear and well-thought-out state policy which supports mother-tongue based multilingual education, teacher training for the implementation of multilingual classrooms, reforming of teacher education programs to include language teaching skills, and the encouragement of the community to participate in school activities.
Several other suggestions focus on the distribution of high-quality teaching and learning materials in various languages, the use of gender-sensitive language strategies, and the development of digital systems to help teachers and students in multilingual settings. This document also stresses that the funding should not be a one-time thing but a continuous stream along with a coordinated national mission to keep these changes going into the future.
The message from the UN agency is not ambiguous. By employing the learning method which is based on the mother tongue, India’s education system can reach more students more efficiently. The question is not only about language. The main issues are that of justice, access, and giving every kid the best opportunity to succeed.