National education policy 2020 revives discussion on MoI issue in Goa

PANAJI: The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 unveiled on Wednesday, among other things, states that “wherever possible the medium of instruction (MOI) should be the mother tongue or the regional language” till Class V. In Goa, where MoI at the primary school level was a subject of heated debates until recently, the NEP appeared to stir discussions on the subject once again.
On Thursday, referring to the NEP, Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch’s (BBSM) Subhash Velingkar launched an appeal to the Church over the MoI issue.
“BBSM appeals to the Church to remain with the national education policy and to take a decision and bring to an end the controversy which has raged since 2011. In 1990, as education minister Shashikala Kakodkar consulted educationists and then decided to extend government grants only to Konkani/Marathi schools. The Church should take the line of the national education policy as it had taken back then,” said Velingkar.
After the RTE Act came into being in 2009, it led to a bitter battle between two groups over MoI at the primary school level. BBSM was formed led by former RSS chief Velingkar to demand that no schools with English as MoI at primary school level should get state grants.
Their demand was mainly directed at 127-odd mainly Church wing affiliated schools for which the state government had made an exception in 2011.
Where the NEP 2020 is concerned, it takes a similar line as in the Right to Education Act, 2009, where it was stated that the ‘MoI shall, as far as practicable, should be in the child’s mother tongue’ at the primary school level.
BBSM member PR Nadkarni said that going by the NEP, the state government should take a decision that from next academic year 2021-22 that all primary schools should teach in the mother tongue if they want to continue to get state grants.
The organisation FORCE, made up of parents of the 127-odd schools that shifted MoI to English at the primary school level, however, said that the NEP too does not make education in mother tongue compulsory at the primary school level or up to Class V or VIII. “NEP too says that mother tongue should be the MoI ‘wherever possible’, keeping it optional and not making it compulsory. This means that the situation remains the same in Goa. But in case the state government chooses to interpret this provision differently, the question will have to be asked if for unaided schools too this policy will be made applicable ,” said Savio Lopes of FORCE.