Page 37 - Tehelka Issue 15 August 2018

education

been established in the selected Model where they can keep their books and er libraries with a librarian working full
Sanskriti schools of the state. These will notebooks. time. This makes the students depend
facilitate digital learning and also im- The Haryana Education department on guidebooks, but they fail to catch the
prove listening and speaking skills of plans to add more government schools nuances of the languages in such books.
the students. As time passes such lan- to this scheme the current financial A large number of students in Hary-
guage labs will be established in other year. The government is also introduc- ana government schools are in the ru-
districts of the state to facilitate stu- ing English as the medium of education ral areas where often the school build-
dents learn the English language. for the students of class I in 238 gov- ings are in a dilapidated state and lack
The English language labs have been ernment schools from this academic basic facilities like water and toilets.
established in six districts of Haryana session. Similarly, two subjects-English In a number of cases, there are Hindi
namely Panchkula, Gurugram, Karnal, and Science are being introduced in the teachers teaching the English language
Rohtak, Faridabad and Hisar will have English medium from Class IX in 310 to students. In other schools, there are
English language labs. The teachers will government schools of the state. After either few teachers or most of the time
be trained to teach the students in the making the base of students strong in they remain absent from the school.
English language. The English labs will English, the English language will help This weakens the base of the students.
help improve digital learning of the them perform better in competitive The Haryana government is trying to
students. Listening and speaking skills examinations once they pass out of the address all these issues.
of the students will also be improved college. Karamvir Singh, president of Con-
to bring them on par with the private federation of SC/ST/ BC Organisations,
schools. Haryana who also managed Sarv Shik-
Dheera Khandelwal said the gov- Data collected from sha Abhiyan centre in Yamunanagar,
ernment is also serious about reducing Haryana said the standard of education
the book load of the young students in government schools in government schools in the state is
schools. As such under a new scheme all over the state pathetic and the government is right in
`bag-free’ plan for students have been addressing the issue.
started in selected 180 government pri- reveal the fact that “Mostly children from poor families
mary schools. Incidentally at present a maximum number attend the government schools and the
student of only class one and two will majority of them belong to the Sched-
benefit from this scheme at present. of compartments uled Castes,’’, he said.
The schools have provided attractive “Almost 90 per cent of the students
lockers for the benefit of the students are in English are very weak in English and Mathe-
matics. Their English knowledge is zero.
photo: tehelka archives In today’s world English is one of the
“The state government has made a most important subjects to learn. How
resolve to improve the basic skills of will the government school students
the students studying in government get good jobs if they have such a poor
schools. We hope in the time to come grasp of the subject? The Haryana gov-
the government school students will ernment’s move to start English as the
start performing better than the stu- medium of education in at least some
dents of private schools. Slowly we government schools is most welcome.
will increase the number of govern- The ‘I am not afraid of English’ too is a
ment schools having English medium good move. Panchayats too should be
as medium of education,’’ said Dheera involved in this effort,’’ said Karamvir
Khandelwal. Singh.
If the primary schools of Haryana According to Pawan Jain, a senior
lack facilities, the higher secondary leader of the Haryana Congress, the
schools are no better. According to government should focus on the per-
Gurmeet Singh, a government school formance of the government school
teacher in Hisar, it is unfortunate that teachers Many of the teachers are not
there are very few libraries in the gov- serious. They either do not attend prop-
ernment schools of the state and thus erly to the students in their schools or
student do not get much chance to refer are absent from their duties. This leads
to other books except their textbooks. to poor performance of the students,’’
This limits their knowledge. According he explained.
to an estimate, just around 30 per cent
of senior secondary schools have prop- letters@tehelka.com

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