Andhra Pradesh Government Decides to Implement English Medium Till 6th Standard for Now

Earlier the AP govt. was planning to make all schools English medium till 10th, but has now decided to confine it till the sixth standard for now.

On Saturday, the Andhra Pradesh government came up with some of the changes in its GO on changing all government schools in the state to English medium. Earlier it was planning to make schools English medium till 10th standard but then decided to confine it till 6th standard only for now.

On Saturday the chief minister of the state, YS Jaganmohan Reddy held a review meeting with the education department officials and took a decision to introduce English medium in all government schools from class 1st to 6th, while Telugu will continue to be the compulsory subject for all the classes.

The CM kept in mind the protests from the teachers’ associations on forcing English medium on schools and ordered the officials to take all the steps that are required to introduce English labs to improve the English of students and teachers in all the schools from 14th November and also launch the Nadu-Nedu program.

The reason that the schools were not made English medium till the 10th standard is that the schools are not well-equipped for now, as explained by the officials. Training teachers so that they can train students is a major exercise. And so the officials suggested the CM introduce the English medium in a phased manner. After which the CM ordered to implement the English medium until the 6th standard.

Reddy also ordered the officials to follow CBSE and ICSE methods according to the advice of the expert committee on education reforms. Apart from this, he also ordered them to emphasis the training of the teachers in dealing with the English medium classes in the upcoming years.

Though the decision has been taken, many teachers’ associations have been opposing this decision of introducing the English medium in primary education.

“Primary education lays the foundation for the students. Many international agencies have opined that primary education in the mother tongue will give the best results. But our government is trying to force English medium on the students just for the sake of competing with private schools. We will continue our fight till the government withdraws its decision,”

said the general secretary of Andhra Pradesh Teachers Federation, G Hrudayaraju.

Even the students’ union has asked the government to totally withdraw the proposal of implementing English medium overnight.