KISS Students Featured on Cover of UNESCO’s Mother Tongue and Multilingual Education Guidelines

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Bhubaneswar: In a significant recognition of its mother tongue-based multilingual education model, students of the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), Odisha, have been featured on the cover of UNESCO’s publication titled ‘Language Matters’, focusing on mother tongue and multilingual education.

The publication highlights the importance of mother tongue-based learning and multilingual education, an approach that KISS has been implementing for the past 15 years.

At KISS, children belonging to various tribal communities are initially taught in their respective mother tongues. They are subsequently introduced to other languages, including Odia, Hindi and English, enabling them to gradually adapt to mainstream academic curricula.

To facilitate this transition, KISS has established a dedicated Mother Tongue-Based Language Laboratory, which helps students develop language skills and overcome linguistic barriers in education.

The institution’s multilingual education model has attracted the attention of UNESCO, with photographs of KISS students appearing on both the front and back covers of the publication.

The front cover features students holding cards displaying letters in their respective mother tongues as they learn to identify and pronounce them.

Similarly, the back cover carries a photograph of KISS primary school students learning Odia and English as part of the institution’s multilingual education programme.

The UNESCO publication emphasises the importance of language mapping at the school and school-cluster levels while formulating educational policies.

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It also recommends clearly defining how different languages should be used at various stages of education, including as mediums of instruction, independent subjects and resources for co-curricular activities.

The publication further highlights the growing importance of mother tongue-based multilingual education in India’s education system and its role in making learning more inclusive and accessible.

Under the initiative of Dr Achyuta Samant, founder of KIIT and KISS, the institution has been promoting mother tongue-based multilingual education to ensure that tribal children receive quality education without losing their linguistic and cultural identities.

The inclusion of KISS students’ photographs in the UNESCO publication marks an important moment for the institution and brings international visibility to its efforts towards inclusive education.

The multilingual education model introduced at KISS is also gaining relevance in the context of India’s ongoing educational reforms, which increasingly emphasise the importance of teaching children in their mother tongues during the foundational stages of learning.

By combining indigenous languages with mainstream education, KISS continues to demonstrate how multilingual teaching practices can help bridge educational gaps while preserving the rich linguistic heritage of tribal communities.

Also read: ‘EducationWorld Lifetime Achievement Award 2026’ conferred upon KIIT-KISS founder Achyuta Samanta

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