As per the National Education Policy, the foreign language “Mandarin” has been removed from the list of foreign languages that students can learn in the school. As per the Hindu, in the National Education Policy final document there is no mention of Mandarin. Moreover, the draft policy which was released in May 2019 did have Mandarin in the list.
According to The Hindu, the draft policy version of 2019 stated that “Students can choose from foreign languages such as French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and learn them as per their interest and choice.”
However, with the rising tensions between India-China over years, the final National Education policy document mentioned that, “In addition to high-quality offerings in Indian languages and English, foreign languages, such as Korean, Japanese, Thai, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian, will also be offered at the secondary level….”
The Hindu reported that Amit Khare who is the Higher Education Secretary has stated that all the languages mentioned in the policy are only few examples and not an exhaustive list. Students as per their interest can learn different languages.
The list of languages offered at Class 10, Class 12 level also do not have the Chinese language Mandarin. However, inn addition to this any of the school can provide other language as third language for classes 6-8.
The Hindu has further reported that yet there is no respond from MEA regarding the plans of removing Mandarin from the curriculum of CBSE.
Meanwhile, discussions were held by the education ministry in accordance with MEA and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations in order to know languages which are important to be in the curriculum. Also, there can be security concern if we include Mandarin in the list for Indian institutions.