Telugu to be made compulsory

Hyderabad: The State government has decided to make Telugu a compulsory subject from class 1 to Intermediate in all the educational institutions in the State from the next academic year, according to Deputy Chief Minister Kadiyam Srihari.

Srihari, who also holds the education portfolio, held a review meeting here on Tuesday with the senior officials of the Education Department and members of the sub-committee appointed to recommend measures to implement Telugu as a compulsory subject.

The Deputy Chief Minister asked the officials to prepare syllabus and textbooks in such a way as to make the study of the language as an interesting one as well as a scoring subject. Briefing the Minister, the sub-committee members explained the way mother tongue was made a compulsory subject in different States like Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and others.

Further, there are about 1,370 schools in the State where Telugu was not taught as the first language. The sub-committee members explained that CBSE and ICSE too can adopt Telugu as first languge, but it was not being implemented. Srihari said the sub-committee would be converted into an Advisory Committee and it would monitor the implementation of the policy and recommend to the government ways to overcome if any problems arose.

Special Chief Secretary Education Rajeev R Acharya, Director of School Education, G Kishan, sub-committee chairman and Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University, Vice-Chancellor, Prof Satyanarayana, Board of Intermediate Education, Secretary Dr A Ashok, State Official Language Commission, Chairman Devulapalli Prabhakar Rao, NCERT Director Seshukumar, Telugu Academy, Director Satyanarayana Reddy were among those attended the meeting.