state policy on multilingual education in odisha 2014
Multilingual Education Odisha is a multilingual state having more than 40 ethnic language among the 62 scheduled tribes, along with the  Modern Indian Languages like Hindi, Bengali and Telugu. To  address the language- education of ethnic minorities children in schools, Odisha government started Multilingual Education programme,ten tribal languages. Led by Dr MAhendra Kumar Mishra, as the Director of Multilingual Education and  guided by Prof. D P Pattanayak and Prof Khageswar Mahapatra, the eminent multilingual Experts, the state  government started MLE programme in te tribal languages in 547 schools. 10 tribal languages were adopted. These are Santali, Saora, Kui, Kuvi, Koya, Kishan, Oroam, Juang, Bonda and  Ho. Culturally responsive curriculum and text books were prepared for class i to  Class V to maintain mother tongue based multilingual education to  educate the tribal children. State government appointed teachers from the same language community in the schools to teach the tribal children.A language policy was also formulated. The programme was also supported by Summer Institute of Linguistics led by Mr Steve Simpson and Vicky Simpson, Pamela Mackenzie. The curriculum and text books were prepared by the  tribal teachers guided by the MLE resource groups. It was initiated in 2005 and isnow running in  2250 schools with majority tribal children. This is a sustained MLE programme in Asian countries.About 7 Asian countries have visited the MLE schools.
Languages of India Tamil (also spelt as Thamizh: தமிழ்) is a Dravidian language predominantly spoken in Tamil Nadu, Puduchery and many parts of Sri Lanka. It is also spoken by large minorities in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius and throughout the world. Tamil ranks fifth by the number of native speakers in India (61 million in the 2001 Census[72][better source needed]) and ranks 20th in the list of most spoken languages.[citation needed] It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and was the first Indian language to be declared a classical language by the Government of India in 2004. Tamil is one of the longest surviving classical languages in the world.[73][74] It has been described as "the only language of contemporary India which is recognisably continuous with a classical past."[75] The two earliest manuscripts from India,[76][77] acknowledged and registered by UNESCO Memory of the World register in 1997 and 2005, are in Tamil.[78] Tamil is an official language of Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Sri Lanka and Singapore. It is also recognized as minority language in Canada, Malaysia, Mauritius and South Africa.