The Third Language Trap: How Early Language Policy Shapes — and Constrains — Children’s Educational Trajectories

Most Indian school children are required to learn three languages simultaneously by Class III or IV. The linguistic evidence on when and how multiple languages should be introduced has direct implications for foundational learning. A contributing voice from child development | Specialist in education equity, school improvement, and teacher professional development This essay addresses one […]

Vishal Jain

Articles Classroom Management Learning barriers Students Teachers

The Long Shadow of the First Year: How Early School Experiences Shape Learning Trajectories

What happens to a child in the first year of formal schooling shapes how they relate to school, learning, and themselves for years — sometimes for life. India’s Class I classrooms deserve far more attention than they receive. A contributing voice from policy analysis | Specialist in child development, wellbeing, and community engagement This essay […]

Vishal Jain

Articles Classroom Management Curriculum Inclusive Education Leadership Students Teachers

The Anganwadi as Classroom: Early Learning Quality and What Research Says About What Children Need at 3, 4, and 5

India’s network of Anganwadi Centres is remarkable in its scale. What happens inside them — the quality of interactions between workers and children — is the most important and least-monitored variable in early childhood development. A contributing voice from school practice | Specialist in curriculum, pedagogy, and school leadership This essay addresses one of the […]

Vishal Jain

Articles Artificial intelligence Classroom Management Students Teachers

Teaching Reading, Not Teaching About Reading: Explicit Phonics and the Foundational Literacy Crisis

Millions of Indian children complete primary school without learning to read fluently. This is not because they lack intelligence. It is because the teaching of reading has been treated as something that happens naturally rather than something that must be explicitly taught. A contributing voice from policy analysis | Specialist in education equity, school improvement, […]

Vishal Jain

Articles Education and technology Learning barriers Students

When the Mother Tongue Is Not the Medium: Language Transitions and the Loss of a Child’s First Voice

India has hundreds of home languages. Its schools teach in a fraction of them. The gap between what a child speaks at home and what the teacher speaks at school is one of education’s most underestimated harms. Prof. Suhasini Bhattacharya | Applied linguist and teacher educator, specialising in multilingual classrooms When a four-year-old from a […]

Blog Post

The Third Language Trap: How Early Language Policy Shapes — and Constrains — Children’s Educational Trajectories

The Long Shadow of the First Year: How Early School Experiences Shape Learning Trajectories

The Anganwadi as Classroom: Early Learning Quality and What Research Says About What Children Need at 3, 4, and 5

Teaching Reading, Not Teaching About Reading: Explicit Phonics and the Foundational Literacy Crisis

When the Mother Tongue Is Not the Medium: Language Transitions and the Loss of a Child’s First Voice