Multilingual Education among Minority Language Communities with reference to the development of MLE programmes in India Pamela MacKenzie, Ad Dip; MA; Phd International Network for Development, UK 1. An Introduction to Multilingual Education: what is it? The purpose of a multilingual education (MLE) programme is to develop appropriate cognitive and reasoning skills through a programme of structured language learning and cognitive development, enabling children to operate successfully in their native, state and national languages. MLE provides a strong foundation in the first language (mother tongue), adding second (e.g. national) and third languages (e.g. English) enabling the appropriate use of both/all languages for life-long learning (Malone 2005). Multilingual education is also multicultural, with learning beginning in the child’s known environment and bridging to the wider world. The bridging process allows children to maintain local language and culture while providing state and/or national language acquisition and instruction. This process provides learners with the opportunity to contribute to national society without forcing them to sacrifice their linguistic and cultural heritage. 2. MLE for minority language communities: the history Until the late 1970s the use of mother tongue in education was only found outside the formal system. Programmes were developed to help adults achieve a basic level of literacy in mother tongue (MT) using a primer-based approach. The use of MT as the language of instruction in the 1980s focused mostly on out of school children; those with no access to school, or those in pre-primary outside the formal system. Even though as far back as 1953 UNESCO suggested that children should be given the opportunity to learn in their mother tongue, it was only in the early 1990s that Multilingual Education programmes such as those described above have been incorporated into both the formal and non-formal systems in some countries. By 2003, UNESCO published a position paper which stated that: “UNESCO supports mother tongue instruction as a means of improving educational quality by building upon the knowledge and experience of the learners and teachers.”