The Centre is planning to allow teaching of foreign languages as skill subjects to students of Class IX and Class X.

Some leading linguists, however, pointed to the lack of facilities to implement such a project in schools and the reduced ability of teenagers to learn new languages.

The department of school education and literacy under the ministry of education (MoE) is implementing vocationalisation of school education under the Samagra Shiksha scheme in government and aided schools. Under the scheme, vocational courses like agriculture, information technology-enabled services, telecom, beauty and wellness and many more are offered to students of Class IX and Class X as additional subjects.

The MoE is now planning to allow teaching of foreign languages like Japanese, German, French and Spanish under the vocationalisation-of-education scheme. The MoE held a meeting last month where the proposal was supported by senior officials. It will be rolled out after formal approval from the minister, two official sources told The Telegraph.

Students of Class IX and Class X are now required to study two language subjects. From the 2029-30 academic session, students of Class IX will study three language subjects. This means the foreign language will be the fourth language subject for students.

Linguist Rama Kant Agnihotri said the teaching of languages in schools would be successful only when the schools have the required resources and are able to provide adequate exposure to students. However, schools in India lack trained teachers, teaching-learning materials and pedagogical strategies that would enhance linguistic literacy at the communicative and academic levels.

Prof. Agnihotri said teachers need to be aware of the potential of the learner, the multilingual nature of her classroom, the nature of the language and the processes of language acquisition. He said a pedagogy rooted in multilingualism would lead to cognitive growth, social tolerance and high levels of proficiency in the target languages.

“In India, the schools have children from diverse linguistic backgrounds. Their preferences for learning languages will be different. The schools do not have trained teachers even for teaching English and Hindi, let alone other Indian languages or foreign languages. We do not have sufficient quality teaching-learning materials either. Well-equipped libraries are not there,” Agnihotri said.

He said that students who can afford to attend private schools often have access to both textual and digital materials. "The advantages they have at home are multiplied in schools. The marginalised students, on the other hand, come from highly disadvantaged families and go to government schools where facilities are limited. Before proposing to introduce more languages, we must make necessary provisions. Otherwise, the introduction of more language subjects without proper preparation will be demotivating for children and lead to wastage of time. Finally, we should note that a given community cannot be forced to learn any language,” Agnihotri said.