Expressing serious concern over the fate of the Urdu medium schools in the State, Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) from East and West Godavari teachers’ constituencies Shaik Sabjee said the school restructuring programme being taken up in the name of reforms in the education sector would lead to closure of the Urdu medium schools in the State.
In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Sabjee found fault with mapping of the Urdu medium schools to non-Urdu medium schools for merger. As part of the restructuring exercise, officials of the Education Department had been mapping Classes 3 to 5 in primary schools with High Schools located within a distance of 3 km.
Academic loss
“Merger of Urdu medium schools in schools that did not have Urdu medium would result in academic loss to the students. We took this matter to the notice of the Education Minister Adimulapu Suresh in the past and he assured us that the Urdu medium schools will be left untouched and they would continue to exist in their present form,” said Mr. Sabjee, complaining that contrary to the assurance given to them, the officials were now going ahead with mapping of Urdu schools also, for their merger with ‘normal’ schools.
He said besides Urdu medium, schools in Kannada, Oriya and Tamil mediums should also be exempted from the merger plan and students pursuing their education in these languages should be left undisturbed.
