How Odisha put home languages to work in school

When UNESCO launched Bhasha Matters in New Delhi on December 16, 2025, it urged India’s states to recruit and assign teachers who could work in the languages children speak at home. ^[1]

India’s 2020 education policy recommends teaching through at least fifth grade in a language children already know where possible. The education ministry says most schools fall under state or territorial authority, where that recommendation has to be put into practice. ^[2]

Odisha’s 2018–19 school report described a programme for children from tribal communities in grades one through five. The state deployed instructors who could teach in the pupils’ languages and developed textbooks and supplementary reading in 21 languages. ^[3]

In July 2025, Odisha’s school education authority invited bids to print and deliver tribal-language textbooks in Keonjhar district. The tender identifies a step in getting books into schools. It gives no count of pupils who received them. ^[4]

A February 2026 UNICEF account from Keonjhar described a book that paired local words with their Odia equivalents in Odia script. That example shows how one classroom could bridge the languages. It leaves open how much pupils learned across the district. ^[5]

About this item: Retrospective report. No first-hand reporting or independent testing is claimed. Corrections policy.