In a major push to strengthen bilingual education in government schools, the Directorate of State Educational Research and Training (DSERT), in collaboration with the Regional Institute of English, South India (RIESI), has launched a year-long teacher development programme that will train around 65,000 teachers across Karnataka between July 2026 and March 2027.

The initiative began with a state-level workshop aimed at equipping District Resource Team (DRT) members with the pedagogical knowledge and practical skills needed to support bilingual teaching in classrooms.

Multi-tier teacher training model

The programme follows a cascading training approach to ensure statewide implementation.

After completing the state-level training, the District Resource Teams (DRTs) will organise district-level workshops for Master Resource Persons (MRPs). The MRPs will then conduct cluster-level training sessions for teachers, expanding the programme's reach across government schools.

According to the Department of School Education and Literacy, this model will enable continuous professional support for nearly 65,000 teachers throughout the academic year.

Focus on bilingual teaching practices

The workshops are designed to strengthen teachers' classroom practices by focusing on:

• Bilingual teaching strategies
• English language instruction through textbook-based pedagogy
• Effective classroom language and teacher talk
• Baseline assessment techniques
• Classroom experience sharing and problem-solving
• Identifying difficult learning concepts and appropriate teaching strategies

Special attention is being given to English, Environmental Studies (EVS), Mathematics, and Kannada textbooks to improve learning outcomes in multilingual classrooms.

Continuous mentoring and academic support

Unlike one-time training programmes, the initiative includes a comprehensive academic support framework comprising:

• Face-to-face workshops
• Regular online follow-up sessions
• Classroom mentoring
• Continuous academic guidance

The programme aims to provide sustained professional development, enabling teachers to effectively implement bilingual teaching-learning practices throughout the school year.

Nearly 400 resource persons trained

As part of the launch phase, 389 District Resource Team members underwent training during workshops held from July 21 to 23, 2026.

The year-long initiative marks one of Karnataka's largest teacher capacity-building programmes in bilingual education and is expected to strengthen multilingual learning environments while improving classroom instruction in government schools across the state.

Karnataka teacher training, bilingual education, DSERT, RIESI, bilingual classrooms, government schools, teacher professional development, Karnataka education