In his initial remarks at the The Hindu Group’s education conclave, Chairman N. Ram called the decision to introduce English medium in government schools a radical step which seemed to be demand-driven.
Mr. Ram said: “It is in tune with the thrust laid on the English language in the Southern States, notably in Kerala where more than half of the 37 lakh children in schools are studying in that medium. What Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy proposed is, therefore, the universalisation of English medium education, which no other State has perhaps ventured to do.”
Mr. Ram stated that Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy took the firm decision to introduce English medium compulsory in government schools by drawing from the experiences during his Praja Sankalpa Yatra when he came across government and government-aided schools that lacked basic facilities and parents who landed in debt trap due to their children’s education. This made Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy to go for a complete makeover of the education system.
STEP programme
On the topic of the conclave ‘Excellence in Education’, Mr. Ram said The Hindu has obvious interest in it having been contributing to the learning and improvement of the English language through its 141-year history. The Standardised Test of English Proficiency (STEP) programme launched by The Hindu in August 2016 has been facilitating an increase in the English language skills in South India.
Setting the agenda for the event, Mr. Ram said the challenge for governments was to strike a balance between the pursuit of quality and excellence and the imperative need to make quality education available at all levels in a progressive way.
“The tension between these two goals defines the nature of all serious intellectual and cultural endeavours in society which is striving to excel while being non-elitist, just and truly democratic in a contemporary sense,” Mr. Ram stated, calling for a pragmatic approach to the reconciliation of those goals and eventually putting things into practice.
