English lures more students

Proactive management committees help increase admissions and standards

​Hyderabad: It is a known fact that enrollment in government schools in the State is low and drop-out rate high but thanks to the proactive school management committees of government schools in the State; there has been a turn around with a spike in enrollment, this despite laxity on the government’s part to support them.

Wherever the school management committees, the district and mandal education officers and local teachers took interest, the enrollment in government schools had shown sharp increase.

About 3,700 schools in the State have had laudable results after this experiment. For example in Karimnagar district after introduction of English medium at primary level, the number of students had gone up from 45 to 93.

In Vontemamimidipally in Warangal urban the model school has about 450 students and majority of them had opted for English medium.

This school has six teachers who teach in Telugu medium and eight in English medium. Following the initiative taken by school management committee even new rooms were constructed and books for the students were purchased. In some places even school buses are being operated.

In places like Adilabad and Karimnagar, people had passed resolution not to send their children to private schools.

But then in the absence of an enduring action plan from the government sustaining the initiative in the long run appears to be a difficult task. According to TSUTF general secretary Chava Ravi, there has been a demand in the State for more than five years to introduce English medium from pre primary level but the government did not take any initiative.

In fact in 2015 it had issued an order to the Regional Joint Directors of School Education and district educational officers and head masters not to open English Medium parallel sections in the existing schools without the prior permission of the competent authorities /government.

But following representations from the public representatives and parents for according permission for opening of new English medium schools and to run parallel English medium classes, the government in 2016 made amends to its order and asked the authorities to consider whether necessary infrastructure facilities were available in the school, such as classrooms, toilets, sufficient teaching staff and their willingness to teach English medium subjects, without additional financial commitment. It said permission could be given if the community agrees to support and run the new sections in all respects.

Ravi said unless the government starts imparting education in English from KG, the educational standards cannot be improved.

A teacher of a school in Karimnagar said they have been running the English medium school with contributions from parents. Though initially, there was good response, the parents feel that if they have to spend money on government schools why not send their children to private institutions where better infrastructural facilities are available.

A teacher in Nizamabad said that they were running an English medium school with high success rate. He said wherever the mandal education officers and school management committees were proactive, the results were encouraging. In fact the government should improve the facilities and impart training to the teachers. As of now there are no trained teachers to teach students who had opted for English medium.

UTF secretary Gaddam Ashok, Karimnagar said that they propose to meet the Collector and submit a representation seeking government help. Endorsing that the experiment of English medium schools has been encouraging, Mandal Education Officer Rajaswamy said there have been cases where the student strength had gone up from 25 to 120.

He said the government should start pre primary sections with English medium and admit students from the age of three. But the government was not responding to their pleas.

He said Deputy Chief Minister Kadiam Srihari announced that the government had decided to open 130 schools in Warangal district at its own cost. On the other hand the government was not ready to help the schools which were already functioning with local initiative.

When asked about it, MLC Paturi Sudhakar Reddy said that he had also heard about the success of some of these schools. But he said majority of the government schools had seen a downfall in admissions. He said the government had asked the Collectors to come up action plans to strengthen the government schools.