Following the positive response to the 1,000 English-medium sections in government schools in Karnataka in the current academic year, the Department of Primary and Secondary Education is now planning to open them in more government schools in 2020-21.

Primary and Secondary Education Minister S. Suresh Kumar told The Hindu that a decision on how many schools should have them would be taken after consultation with Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa.

Senior officials said they were likely to be started in at least 1,000 more schools.

“Teachers will also be trained to teach English in Class Two where it has been started this year. We will write to the government to sanction additional teacher posts,” they said.

This year, the department decided to train the existing teachers. No new teachers were recruited.

The sections have seen a huge demand in many schools. According to the Department of Public Instruction, the number of students admitted to the sections is more than double the number admitted to the Kannada-medium sections. The amendment to the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Rules, which does not make it mandatory for private unaided schools to admit economically backward students if there are government or aided schools in the same locality, also pushed up demand for the sections, officials said.

Dissent too

The move has been welcomed by certain sections, who said it would help improve student strength in government schools and give an opportunity to students from lower economic backgrounds access to English medium education.

However, there has been objection to the move. A delegation of writers including M. Chidananda Murthy, Go.Ru. Channabasappa and Doddarange Gowda met Mr. Yediyurappa and demanded that the sections started in 2019-2020 should be closed. They are said to have told the Chief Minister that Kannada was moving towards extinction and English-medium sections would be further detrimental to this. The decision to start English-medium sections in government schools along with Kannada-medium sections was taken by the former coalition regime led by H.D. Kumaraswamy, despite opposition from some quarters.