One of the main planks of YS Jagan Mohan Reddy before coming to power was to make English the medium of education in government schools with Telugu being one of the compulsory language subjects. And sticking to his promise after becoming the chief minister, Jagan pushed this policy while advocating that it will make children of his state competitive on par with others globally as they grow up.
However, the opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) vehemently opposed it invoking "Telugu Pride".
Now, in an interesting development, the ruling YSRCP government has conducted a survey as to how many percentage of parents prefer English as a medium of subjects and teaching in schools.
As per its survey, about 96.17% of parents have extended support to the government decision of introducing English medium at the primary level.
"Earlier, the government had taken this decision to make every child in the state competent to meet global standards. The YSRCP government is keen on providing quality education for every child in the state and equip them with world-class knowledge. In this context, the prestigious "Nadu-Nedu' programme was being utilized in schools by providing infrastructure facilities," informed an education department official.
To seek the opinion from parents of class 1 to 5 students, the government collected written opinions from them from the village level through volunteers.
A special format with three options was formulated:
1. English as the medium of instruction while Telugu as a mandatory subject
2. Telugu medium
3. Other languages
As on April 29, of the 17,87,035 parents of the students from class I to V, about 17,85,669 have shown their interest in opting for the first option. About 3.05% have chosen second and 0.78% the third option voluntarily.