Often
enough, in India, Shakespeare's "whining schoolboy" is in the news –
in relation, I must add, to the language in which the Bard wrote about
him. They both – the schoolboy and the
English language – are in the news again now. A few months ago, the government
of Andhra Pradesh (AP) dropped a demonetization-like bombshell when it
announced that, with immediate effect, English would replace Telugu as the
medium of instruction (MoI) in the municipal schools in the State. In response
to protests by teachers’ unions, however, the government has relented on the
issue; yesterday’s papers said that the ‘controversial move’ had been ‘put on
hold’ (The Hindu, Vijayawada Edition,
6 January 2016, p. 1).
English-in-schools
policies in India
The state
governments' English-in-schools policies are interesting. In some states, English is not at all part of
the primary school curriculum. In some,
it is, as in Andhra Pradesh, but is offered only from Class III. Maharashtra, which had been offering English
only from Class VIII, changed its policy at the dawn of the new millennium and
introduced English in Class I itself.
The West Bengal government, which had been firmly against a place for
English in the primary school for more than two decades, changed its policy in
the year 2000 and introduced English in Class III, following the Tamil Nadu
example. Later, it dispensed with the
policy altogether and introduced it in Class I itself.
The
obsession with English in AP
But, this post is
about English as the MoI in the government-run schools in Andhra Pradesh. During
the past ten years so, irrespective of the party in power, the government of AP
has been keen on introducing English as the MoI in all schools. In 2008, six
years before the State was bifurcated, the government rolled out an interesting
MoI policy called SUCCESS, an acronym for Strengthening
and Universalizing Quality of and Access to Secondary Schools, for
implementation in select schools. In these 6,500 schools identified for SUCCESS,
instruction was made available in both English and Telugu, and parents could
opt for one of these two languages as the MoI for their children. There are only
3072 SUCCESS schools in AP now, as 3428 became part of Telangana in 2014. In
2015-16, the government wanted the SUCCESS schools to become fully-fledged
English-medium schools with the Telugu-medium sections in them being shifted to
non-SUCCESS high schools in the neighbourhood, and issued orders to this
effect, but has failed to implement the orders so far. The government also announced
that the teachers of the SUCCESS schools would be trained by UNICEF, the
British Council, and English and Foreign Languages University during summer
holidays, but this plan also remains only on paper. The last two events in this
English as the MoI history are the decision to replace Telugu with English as
the MoI in all the municipal schools and the climb-down a couple of days ago.
The
reasons for the obession
Why is the
government so fixated on English as the MoI? I can think of two reasons.
First, enrolment in
government-run schools in AP has greatly declined, and perhaps the government
thinks that “upgrading” them into English medium schools will give them a
makeover. At the beginning of this academic year, there were as many as 5639
primary schools with fewer than 20 children in each, and the government wanted
to close 2,300 of them by merging them with upper primary schools. (The
situation is worse in Telangana where 6,361 primary schools are facing the
threat of closure.)
Can English medium
provide the needed attraction? The government seems to think so. But, it is not
altogether wrong because, the Telugus, unlike the Tamils, the Malayalees and
even the Maharashtrians, seem to put a high premium on English language
education to the extent of ignoring their mother tongue; the craze for
English-medium education runs so deep here. During the three school-year period
till 2006, enrolment at the upper-primary level in English medium schools in AP
registered a dramatic 100% increase (i.e. from 10.6 lakh to 20.9 lakh), while
the figures for Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Kerala for the same period are 17%
(from 14.7 lakh to 17.2 lakh), 12% (10.6 lakh to 11.9 lakh) and 3% (2.4 lakh to
3.2 lakh) respectively [http://www.schoolreportcards.in/Media/m69.html].
Secondly, the
government seems to think that an early start in English is necessary to cope
with the needs of a fast globalizing economy.
It seems to assume that an early start will serve to equalize learning
opportunities and empower the underprivileged sections of society. Implicit in this assumption is the cynical
belief that the mother tongue is inimical to the child's success in the job
market.
Can
an early start in education through English help?
Are the government’s
assumptions about an early start in English education yielding gains valid?
Research has shown
that a late start in a second or foreign language is not at all a disadvantage:
late starters can easily catch up with early starters, using the skills they
have learnt in their first language, if they have attained, in the first
language, what is called CALP (cognitive and academic language proficiency).
And acquiring CALP in the first language doesn’t involve a long and painful
process. Proficiency in the mother tongue is, therefore, a resource. A good deal of research has been done in the
area of the best starting age for learning a second language. The findings (e.g.
Lightbown, P. M., and Spada, N. 2006. How
Languages are Learned. Oxford University Press) indicate that unless an L2
learning situation is similar to that of an L1 acquisition situation, which is
possible in the case of total immersion, learning a second or a foreign
language in childhood is not at all an advantage. As a matter of fact, research
results suggest that one can learn a second language more effectively if one
starts around 12-14 years.
Assuming, for the
sake of argument, that an early start is advantageous, its success depends upon
competent teaching. Is this possible in
our State-run schools?
Can
our State-run schools cope with the demands of English as the MoI?
Yesterday, I did a
good deal of field work visiting a few SUCCESS schools in Vijayawada Urban and
discussing with a cross section of teachers the teaching-learning situation
obtaining there during the past eight years, ever since the introduction of
English as the MoI alongside Telugu. From what the teachers said, this is how I
understand the situation:
1.The
teachers were pushed into teaching through English with no preparation or training.
2.When the
SUCCESS programme was launched, the government promised to train the teachers adequately
through different means. GO Ms No. 76 Education (SE-TRG) Department dated 10 June 2008 promises the following, among others:
(a) adequate training for the subject teachers drawing upon the expertise of English and Foreign Languages (EFL) University and the Regional Institute of English (RIE);
(b) long-term training for 40-45
secondary-grade teachers at EFL University, the RIE and other institutions and
then using them as resource persons for conducting district-level training
programmes for the rest of the teachers; and
(c) equipping each of the 6500 schools with an
English language lab and 6 English-Telugu and 6 Telugu-English dictionaries).
All these grandiose
plans have remained a pipe dream to this day; none of them has materialized. Except for a 5-day orientation programme in
2008, there has been no training whatsoever during the past eight years or so.
3.Far from
putting in a mechanism for training teachers, the government has withdrawn the
only mechanism available, namely the District Education Centre for English
(DECE). In Krishna district, for instance, a DECE was set up in Vijayawada under
a Government of India scheme with funding from MHRD for the first five years.
This had been done in 2006, two years before the SUCCESS programme commenced,
and as Director, Loyola ELT Centre, I was also associated with the training
programmes of the DECE. But, in 2011, when the SUCCESS programme was in full
swing, the DECE was closed down because the funding from MHRD stopped.
Ironically enough, the GO referred to above orders the Director of
School Education to strengthen the existing DECEs with ‘additional training and
hostel facilities’ and set up three new DECEs in each district where there is
no DECE ‘to provide
training to the High School Teachers in improving their English language
abilities.’ Do you know how the Department of School Education implemented
this? By winding up the only DECE in Krishna district, leaving the district with
neither a DECE nor an ELTC!
4. Neither
has the government been serious about equipping schools with adequate number of
teachers. According to the latest National Assessment Survey (NAS) conducted by
the NCERT, (a) State-run schools in AP are short of 17,129 teachers; (b) 31% of
the headmaster posts are vacant; (c) absenteeism among teachers is very high;
and (d) 50% of the teachers are not teaching at all. (The last of the four
findings involving arithmetical precision intrigues me; perhaps, this has to do
with the figures for teacher absenteeism, too. For more information on the
subject, one may read the paper, ‘Teacher Absence in India: A Snapshot,’ by
Micheal Kremer of Harvard University and four others, including three World
Bank officials, in Journal of European Economic Association, April-May 2015.
(http://www.teindia.nic.in/Files/Articles/Articles_23feb12/jeea_teacher_absence_in_india.pdf)
When the subject
teachers are so ill-equipped and feel demotivated on account of the
cold-shouldering by the government, one cannot expect their teaching to be very
competent. It is an open secret that even in private English medium schools and
colleges, English education is by and large impoverished. While subject
teachers rarely use English, even English teachers teach the content through
Telugu even in urban areas. When this is the situation in the majority of the private
English medium schools themselves, if the government expects teachers in
State-run Telugu medium schools, especially those in rural areas which
constitute the majority of our schools, to become competent teachers through English
through their own efforts, it is living in a dream world.
The
way forward
But, governments
don’t listen. I’m sure that later if not sooner, municipal schools will become
English medium schools with the bulk of the teaching taking place through
Telugu and the students doing a poor job of memorizing answers in English to
serve examination purposes. That cannot be averted altogether, but disaster
management is certainly possible. If only the government makes a sincere
attempt to follow the programme of action it set out for itself eight years ago
in GO Ms No. 76, then it is possible to achieve some degree of success in the
implementation of English-as-the-MoI policy in the municipal schools and remedy
the situation in the SUCCESS schools.
