With a population of approximately 1.3 billion people, India represents a unique example of ethnic, socio-cultural and religious diversity that brings with it a very rich linguistic diversity. According to the 2011 Census Report, there are a total of 121 languages and 270 mother tongues. The need to protect, preserve and promote languages stems from the integral role it plays in culture and identity of persons and society.

While on the one hand there is a strong need foster multilingualism in India, one cannot discount the pivotal role that English has come to occupy in a globalizing world. While children in Urban India are largely educated in English at the cost of their own regional language and mother tongues, children in rural locales do not get enough exposure to English, thus losing out on higher education and employment opportunities. This propels the CLIL@India initiative to propose a bilingual model of education.

The Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach, gaining ground in European education system, is seen as the way forward to bring about a balance between English and the regional languages. CLIL is an innovative method that can supplement the 3-language policy in India.

We have CLIL@India Resource and Training centres, repositories of books and teaching material at each of the four universities in India who form part of our consortium. Each Centre also has a Language Lab that is freely accessible by the public.

We have reached out to 14 schools which form part of our pilot study on CLIL in the Indian context.

Thus far, we have been able to conduct four 5-day Open CLIL Intensive Workshops in India. Through these workshops, we have been able to have been able to impart training on CLIL to 120+ teachers.