Now, English to reach remotest Guj

Good morning friends.  English language is a universal language.  It is very important that we all should learn this language to communicate with the majority.  I’m glad to tell you that English now will reach to remotest Gujarat.  We all know that many will benefit on this English language. With reference to The Times of India  English teaching will be taught  to some isolated area in Gujarat.

 

While the Samajwadi Party has vowed to work against use of English in education in its manifesto, the Gujarat government has decided to go in just the opposite direction — ensure that the language is taught in the remotest corners of the state.

A new scheme will be launched to teach English to standard VIII students in 164 schools in Gujarat’s eastern tribal belt. To benefit some 8,000 tribal children, this will include 120 tribal ashram shalas as well. Gujarat already has Society for Creation of Opportunity through Proficiency in English (SCOPE) to teach the language to urban youth.

Thanks to satellite technology, the best teachers of English will reach out to the children.

“Ashram shalas are equipped with televisions and computers. The best teachers from Ahmedabad and Vadodara will be hired to give tutorials sitting in a studio at Bharkarachaya Institute for Space Application and Geoinformatics (BISAG) in Gandhinagar.”  

Teaching will start from the next academic year, but the government is gearing up now. Teachers from the tribals schools will be called to Gandhinagar for orientation courses.

They will have to remain present in the room while the tutorials are being telecast. The plan is to turn the teachers into local resource persons who will ensure that the children take interest.

Ahmedabad-based NGO Unnati-Organisation for Development Education, has been hired to do the job. Unnati director Binoy Acharya told TOI that the distance learning model was chosen because it is “difficult to take good English teachers to tribal areas”. “This is a pilot project, which will later be extended to all tribal schools. There will be around 35 sessions, each lasting one-and-a-half hours, with on-line facility for local teachers to interact with the tutor in BISAG.”

If the experiment is successful, the government plans to extend it to mathematics and science and then to other standards as well. As for English, the children will be given elementary knowledge, which will be followed up by monthly and quarterly tests.

“Answer books will be dispatched to Gandhinagar for regular checking in order to know the progress of each child and also whether distance learning in English can be extended to other subjects.”