Rising demand for English medium schools: Drop in AMC-run regional language medium schools despite NEP push for mother tongue

Meanwhile, the AMC School Board added 20 English medium schools in the past two years alone. It opened its first English medium public school with kindergarten as entry classes in 2013-14 in the Shahpur area of Old Ahmedabad.

The trend of ‘other’ medium schools shutting down began in 2006, but in less than a decade the number of English medium schools has grown to 55 in 2022-23 from just one in 2013-14. Interestingly, the English medium schools replaced the language medium schools that closed down.

Parents as well as the school board authorities said the declining preference for the mother tongue as the medium of instruction and the shift towards English medium led to the closure of these schools over the past few years. “The demand by parents today is for English medium and smart schools,” said L D Desai, AMC School Board Administrative Officer.

Even as the National Education Policy 2020 advocates both public and private schools to follow “wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/mother tongue/local language/regional language”, the AMC has plans to launch more English medium schools by Diwali. From the existing 20 smart schools in English medium, the plan is to launch another 40 around the festival that is only three weeks away. The 55 English medium schools have around 12,000 students.

“We are preparing one smart school in each ward by Diwali. This will add to the existing 20 smart schools. Also, 50 new English medium schools are being planned for the next academic session based on demand surveys,” Desai added.

Among the existing 459 municipal schools in Ahmedabad with 1,67,788 students, 64 are in Hindi medium, 55 English medium and 38 Urdu and the remaining 302 are Gujarati medium schools. There are two Marathi medium schools with nearly 280 students. All Tamil schools were closed down by 2021.

In addition, the only Tamil medium secondary and higher secondary school, run by a private trust as grant-in-aid, has been forced to shut down last year after it failed to meet the criteria of the minimum number of students.

“The education department has asked us to submit an application for running it as a private school. The trustees are yet to take a final call. More than half from the last batch of 31 students have gone back to Tamil Nadu,” says Dr Shanmuganandham, managing trustee of the five-decade-old Ahmedabad Tamil Welfare Education Trust.

Robert Adidravidar, a tailor whose daughters Durga and Tulsi were in the Tamil medium school in Class 9 and Class 7 respectively, dropped out after the last school closed in 2021. “With no Tamil medium school available here I even sent my daughters to my village in Chennai. They studied there for a year but were eventually forced to return to Ahmedabad as after living here for all these years, I do not have any family member to take care of them,” Adidravidar told The Indian Express.

He said a lot has changed over the years. “I had studied in the same school where my two daughters were enrolled that eventually shut down. I completed my Class 7 in the year 1997 from the same municipal school. Then, there were so many students that the school had to build more rooms to accommodate us but today, there are hardly students enough to be accommodated in a single classroom.”

When asked if parents have requested the authorities to let the school continue, Adidravidar said, “Initially, parents would request teachers and authorities but when they did not pay any heed to these requests, parents were left with no other option.”

With the Tamil medium primary schools closed, there are no students in secondary and higher secondary classes, said Dr Shanmuganandham. The enrollment of the school from Classes 9-12 in the past five years was 84, 66, 59, 52 and 31.

In the case of the Marathi medium schools, the number dropped from 22 in 2005 to only two today.

Until 2020, there were three Marathi medium schools that were further reduced in 2021 to two-Amraiwadi Marathi School Number 2 and Khokhra Marathi School Number 3.

Desai said the future of the Marathi medium schools would depend on the enrolment and demand. New admissions were being made in English medium, he said.

In 2005, the civic body ran 539 schools with 1,87,115 students. Due to mergers and closure of both Telugu and Malayalam medium schools, this reduced to 443 schools by 2006. With the move, the teachers in these mediums were also gone. The last Telugu and Malayalam medium schools had 38 and 33 students respectively.

Sindhi was the next medium to lose its existence in Ahmedabad. With the shift of students to English medium, the demand dropped following which the last two Sindhi medium schools too closed down in 2016.