English Language Learning among Students of Model Residential Schools in the Tribal Areas of Kerala: A Review

Abstract

English occupies a position in India that is at once academic, administrative and aspirational. For learners from Scheduled Tribe communities, however, it typically arrives as a fourth or fifth code, layered over a tribal mother tongue, a regional language and a link language, and unsupported by exposure outside the classroom. Model Residential Schools, and the national Eklavya Model Residential Schools, were established to break this cycle. This paper reviews the conceptual and empirical literature on English language learning among students of Model Residential Schools in the tribal areas of Kerala. It situates English within global, national and state contexts, tracing the policy architecture that has shaped English Language Teaching in India and the profile of Kerala's thirty-six notified tribal communities, and then reviews twenty studies published between 2015 and 2024 across four strands: learner-centred research on skills and errors; pedagogical, technological and interventionist research; research on access, enrolment and retention; and research on residential schooling and achievement. Three tables present the district-wise distribution of the Scheduled Tribe population in Kerala, the population and sex ratios of major tribes, and a synthesis of the reviewed studies. The review finds that intervention studies report gains with near-uniform consistency while descriptive studies of tribal education report deficits with equal consistency, and that the two literatures rarely meet inside the same institution. The paper closes by identifying research gaps and directions for future enquiry.