HYDERABAD: What started as an attempt to salvage government schools, soon became a hit among parents. The decision to convert hundreds of primary schools into English medium schools in districts like Karimnagar, Warangal and Nizamabad by teachers and its success led to the government giving the official nod to other schools across the State to follow suit.
As expected the enrolment rate in government schools has shot up. But the education experts think that despite the change in medium of instruction, it has had little effect on learning outcomes of government school students.
In 2016-17, for instance, 4,872 schools in the State were given permission to convert to English medium. Earlier back in 2008, in the united Andhra Pradesh, for the first time the then government had granted permission to run high schools with parallel mediums - 5,500 in Andhra and 2,200 Telagana area.
A social audit of learning outcomes carried out on 1,302 students from Class V to X by Campaign for Learning Outcomes, released last week confirmed this belief. It revealed that while 650 students could neither read nor write English, 271 could read only small sentences but not entire paragraphs.
Problem of parallel medium
Apart from granting the approval for change of medium of instruction, teaching community alleges, that the government did little to ensure that the move actually benefits students. In fact, the decision to run two parallel mediums is part of the problem. With the teacher-student ratio dismal in government schools, forcing one teacher to handle not just several classes but to even teach in two different languages.
“Most teachers are from Telugu medium background so for the sake for convenience they end up teaching in Telugu. Also, they find it difficult to alternate between Telugu in one period and English in the next. Students are not able to get acquainted with the language” said T Venkateshwar Rao, President, English Language Teachers Association.
Proper training needed
The problem is further compounded by insufficient training of the lack thereof. For instance, in 2016, select primary teachers were provided five-day English language training. This was supplemented a year later by another five-day training for the same set of teachers.
“Now only a couple of teachers are trained from each school and later they too were transferred. Last academic year in Warangal, teachers from 132 primary schools have been trained but soon they got transferred to Telugu medium schools. This beats the very purpose of having English medium schools,” said Nagati Narayana, an educationist.
Since a number of teachers themselves took the initiative to start classes in English medium and when it started showing positive results, teachers feel the government became complacent.
Teachers suggest
Start cluster schools: provide transportation from village to schools
Improved training mechanism in terms of both quality and quantity
Post training, need for evaluation
Refreshers training programmes to keep teachers up to date
Certificate programmes for teachers