The International Mother Language Institute has made little progress in preserving 40 national minority languages in 14 years since its inception in 2010.
The Multilingual Education Programme introduced in five languages for pre-primary to Class III in 2017 has, meanwhile, hardly benefited children studying in Chakma, Marma, Tripura (Kok Borok), Garo and Sadri.
鈥楨ighteen of the 40 ethnic languages have writing systems. But most of them are not in use. There are hardly any coordinated efforts to develop and preserve the languages,鈥� said Mathura Bikash Tripura, the executive director of Zabarang Kalyan Samity, which has been working on mother tongue-based education since 2006.
Experts emphasise that the shortage of teachers, lack of training and oversight and no specific time for multilingual education in school routines hinder the proper implementation of the programme.
The institute, mandated to preserve all languages, document and research endangered languages, develop writing systems for unwritten languages and compile dictionaries, could neither develop writing systems for languages in need nor conduct research and make documentation on or compile dictionaries for any languages that face extinction.
A linguistic survey that the institute began in 2013 and completed in 2018 has identified 41 languages, including Bangla, that are in use. Fourteen of them are classified as endangered.
Of the endangered languages, 10 are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people. The number of Rengmitca speakers declined from 40, when the survey began, to half a dozen in 2025. Kharia has only two speakers now.
Mathura, who received the institute鈥檚 International Mother Language Award in 2021, has said that the institute has plans to publish the survey details in 10 volumes. But it has failed to do the task, which could be a significant step towards preserving the languages.
The institute鈥檚 director Mohammad Ashaduzzaman has said, 鈥楾he institute has plans to document four endangered languages 鈥� Rengmitca, Kondo, Patro and Kharia. But, information collection on Patro has so far been done.鈥�
Ashaduzzaman has said that the institute needs to take up a project to publish the survey details, noting that developing writing systems is a critical task which needs a budget.
The first phase of the Multilingual Education Programme was launched keeping to the National Education Policy 2010, which aims to ensure children鈥檚 right to education in their first language. A textbook and an exercise book are now given to pre-primary students in their language.
Students of Class I and II are given the Amar Bangla Bai text and mathematics textbooks translated into their language. Class III students are given only the Amar Bangla Bai text translated into their language.
Jiban Lal Chakma, the headteacher of the Terachara Government Primary School in Khagrachari, has said that the school has Chakma and Tripura students, but there has been no teacher for the Tripura language since 2023. The teacher for Chakma has been on maternity leave since November 2024.
He has also said that the routines that the government approves do not have classes for multilingual teaching, making the classes irregular, which hampers learning.
Jayas Chakma, a Class IV student of the school, has said that he cannot read Chakma or write in the language.
Mathura, who wrote the Kok Borok textbooks, has said that there are some teachers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, but many try to avoid being posted to villages because of political unrest. There are few teachers for national minority children on the plain.
He has listed the absence of training, training materials and an evaluation process as well as an inadequate budget holding back the proper implementation of the programme.
Abu Noor Md Shamsuzzaman, the additional director general of the Directorate of Primary Education who is now the acting director general, could not be reached for comments.
The Population and Housing Census 2022 that the Bureau of Statistics conducted lists 16,50,478 people belonging to 50 ethnic groups living in Bangladesh.