Education in mother language enhancing student learning

Rukum– The teaching activities being conducted in the mother language at various schools in Rukum Purba have brought about improvement in the quality of education.

A majority of the population of this district speaks the Magar Kham language. The community schools at Bhume and Putha Uttarganga rural municipalities in the district have started teaching in the Magar Kham language in a bid to enhance the quality of education and facilitate learning in students.

This effort by the local government of the rural municipalities has paid with improvement in the learning aptitude of the children.

Four hundred and eighty students in Bhume rural municipality and more than 200 students in Putha Uttargangarural municipality have been studying in their mother tongue. The local Magar community-only meetings, conferences, discussions and other programmes are conducted in the mother language.

It is said the children from the Magar community are poor in the Nepali subject as Nepali is not their mother language. They had to struggle understanding the Nepali language at school.

At present, 12 schools in Bhume and 13 in Putha Uttarganga are teaching in the mother tongue. Eight schools have been teaching in multiple languages including in mother tongue since eight years while four schools have been doing so since the last two years in Bhume.

Similarly, they13 schools in Putha Uttarganga rural municipality have started teaching in the Magar Kham language in Grade 1 since last April.

"We started teaching the kids in the mother language as they had to struggle much with the Nepali language textbooks," said Khim Bahadur Budhachhetri, head teacher at Mahendra Secondary School.

According to him, they are teaching by translating the various subject textbooks into the Magar Kham language. They are teaching in the mother tongue in Grade 1 at present and plan to do so in Grade 2 from the next academic session and expand to Grade 3 in the following academic year.

Headteacher at Himalaya Basic School in Gawang, Bhume rural municipality-2, Govardhan Budhamagar said the subject-wise annual results have improved thanks to the teaching in the mother tongue. He added that the children have also started coming to school regularly, improving the attendance rate.