Mother Tongue Education in Aathrai Rural Municipality: Policies and Practices

To get education in mother tongue is the rights of every individual secured by the constitution of Nepal. Provide Linguistics rights to all inhabitants is challenging for government because Nepal is linguistically diverse country where we can find one hundred and twenty-four native languages (Census, 2078). In Nepal, there are different policies to provide mother tongue based multilingual education specially in basic level education. To implement national policies, local government also made its own policies and planning to provide mother tongue education. In such a situation, this research aims to review the policies and practices and explore strategies made by school for mother tongue education. To fulfill it, different national and local policies regarding mother tongue education were reviewed and three head teacher were selected purposively for interview from different schools of Aathrai Rural Municipality of Terhathum district where mother tongue education is running around ten years ago. The qualitative data were analyzed descriptively and thematically. Document related to mother tongue education were analyzed in different parameters: policies of multilingual education in Nepal, significance of MLE, effectiveness of MLE and local level education act review. Strategies related findings made by school for mother tongue education are: initiation and operation of mother tongue based education, nominate language teacher, adequacy of language textbook, parent education and awareness program and managerial aspects of mother tongue based education.