The Delhi government believes it will benefit from the findings of Multilila (Multilingualism and Multiliteracy) Project being undertaken by British Council along with others. The project aims to find out whether children who speak different languages at home than the the medium of instruction in schools, have lower learning outcomes than children whose home and school language is the same.

At its official launch here on Thursday, Atishi Marlena, Advisor on Education to the AAP-led Delhi government said: "With this project, we are also going to be the recipients of their research. British Council India and Cambridge University will provide us with a lot of insights on this.”

Another objective of the project is to explore whether or not there are significant differences in the learning attainment of children attending schools in more deprived areas. The project includes various stakeholders which include University of Cambridge and British Council India, with co-investigators from University of Reading, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), English and Foreign Languages (Hyderabad) and the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Karnataka.

The four-year project began at the end of 2016 and will continue till 2020. The three research sites for this project are Delhi, Hyderabad and Bihar.

“One of the reasons for choosing the three cities was that we have our collaborators present in all these cities. The project is funded by The Economic Social and Research Council and by The Department for International Development -- both in UK. In this project, British Council is the strongest partner”, said Ianthi Maria Tsimpli, Professor of English and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge.

Final research findings are to be expected to be out by 2020. Currently, data collection is underway, with around 1,000 child participants (Standard IV) in the database.

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