The educational language policy in a polity not only reflects the classroom learning situation but also represents the power relation between the social groups. Dominant language policy provides better learning opportunities for dominant language speaking students while it causes poor educational achievement and discrimination for non-dominant language speaking students. On the contrary, multilingual education policy brings the non-dominant languages at the center and aims to ensure equal learning opportunities for all. Likewise, it is significant in promoting language ecology and ensuring linguistic human rights for all. Empirical evidences across the world indicate that the use of an unfamiliar language during the early years in education does have negative consequences in the educational and cognitive development of children. Additionally, it also affects the social, economic, and political interests of the non-dominant language groups.
Despite the diversity of languages in the nation, the dominant language, Nepali, was in the prominent role in education for a long time. The Nepal National Education Planning Commission (1956) recommended employing Nepali as the medium of education while urging teachers to use mother tongues informally in case the students are unfamiliar to Nepali language. It is the Constitution of Nepal (1990) that began the era of mother tongue education in Nepal with the constitutional recognition of mother tongue education system. Granting rights to the language communities in preserving and promoting mother tongues was the goal of such constitutional provision. The mother tongue education system has been redefined along with the formulation of Nepal Education for All: National Plan of Action (2003) which aims to achieve educational goals through mother tongue education system as it improves access and quality of basic education. It adopts the multilingual approach of teaching aiming to develop literacy in multiple languages with strong foundation of the mother tongue.
Although the government has formulated the positive policy, the implementation of multilingual education policy is not satisfactory. Even after the successful piloting in the selected six districts, there are only 24 schools operating the program in the whole nation. Despite the strong advocacy of language communities and non-government organizations, more and more schools are still operating Nepali-based education system. Instead of switching to multilingual education system, the trend of switching to English is in the rise. There are several factors resisting the use of mother tongues in education and the multilingual education. Inappropriate models of the program, lack of well-trained mother tongue teachers, lack of literacy materials, and the ineffectiveness of teaching methods in non-dominant mother tongues are some of these factors. Likewise, inefficient model of second language acquisition program is also a factor in hindering the mother tongue education. Moreover, the domination of monolingual ideology is the principal factor challenging the implementation of multilingual education policy in Nepal. It has the connotation of hierarchical power relation between the social groups placing the dominant language group at the top.