School teachers, students in TS face English barrier

Hyderabad: Students in Budget private schools and government schools often lack proficiency in English language, as the teachers use the local language to teach them. As per a study by an NGO, besides students, 85 per cent of teachers who teach English in schools have the same level of English proficiency.

According to educationists, the main drawback behind this issue is that there is huge staff crunch in low Budget Private Schools and Government Schools, the teachers who are teaching English especially in primary section have studied in Urdu medium and Telugu medium schools, students studying in these schools have less exposures to English language in the society and surroundings.

Venugopal, a retire government school teachers said, "The State government has taken a good initiative in introducing English medium in Government Schools but has forgot to strengthen and train teachers. Same goes with Private Low Budget Schools. In the schools the management is least bothered of the future of the students. They appoint teachers as per their budget. Generally, students belonging to lower strata of the society come to these schools, so more efforts should be taken by the schools and teachers for improving the students English skills, for which they should appoint experienced English teachers for molding the foundation of the students."

"In Private Low Budget Schools and Government Schools, especially primary section students are finding it difficult in reading alphabets and also framing difficult sentences. Our State government is only busy in improving the infrastructure in schools which is not enough. The State government organised training programmes, but organising training for few days is not sufficient, teachers should be trained every month. The education department must also make strategies to boost the students' strength," said Ravinder, an educationist. Praveen, another educationist said, "the main reason behind students not having English proficiency is that in these schools we teachers communication with the students only in Telugu or Hindi. Another reason is that the students are not exposed to the society for them to learn or speak in English. There should continuous training session though out the academic year. It will be better if the Education department take an initiative to conduct motivational classes for students and motivate them to speaking English."