Telangana govt’s Telugu only e-class stumps English, Urdu students

HYDERABAD: After a hiatus of six months, the Telangana government’s plan to go digital and provide education at home via T-SAT and Doordarshan fell flat on Wednesday after nearly 10 lakh English and Urdu medium students found that the lessons were all in Telugu.
Moreover, the unavailability of T-SAT on various broadcasters made it impossible for even Telugu-speaking students to attend the digital class.

E-lessons are being transmitted from 9 am to 4.30 pm on T-SAT and from 10.30 am to 1 pm on Doordarshan Yadagiri. The lessons, however, are making little sense to students whose medium of instruction is English and Urdu.
“I attended physical education lessons but could hardly understand anything. I only looked at the pictures and tried to make sense of what the teacher was saying on screen. I often clicked pictures of the TV screen and sent it to my class teacher to get some clarity,” said Asifa Begum, a class 9 Urdu medium student of a government school in Vikarabad.
Students who have Telugu as their mother tongue but English as their medium of instruction are also finding it difficult to cope up as they are unable to understand various terms in subjects such as science.
“I have studied in English medium since primary school. While Telugu and English language subjects are easy to understand, studying Physics and Physical Science is very difficult as I am unable to understand,” said Anusha Mandala, a class 10 student from Warangal.
“Whenever I don’t understand anything, I reached out to my subject teachers. But doing that constantly is not viable,” she added.
Teachers admit that many students are facing issues in learning core subjects. “Students don’t understand the meaning of terms such as mass, volume, reflection etc in Telugu. Grasping theoretical subjects such as Science, BioScience is emerging as a major challenge for many,” said Roja Rani, a teacher at a government school.
According to school education department officials, Telugu content is being converted into English with voice-over. “We are producing over 500 digital lessons for class 6 to 10 students in English. Simultaneously, content for primary students is also being produced. We are hopeful that by the third week of September, the same will be transmitted,” said a senior official overseeing content development.
There is however no clarity for over 1.5 lakh Urdu medium students. “The day officials decided to transmit e-lessons through television, we had urged the government that lessons should be simultaneously transmitted in different languages. But Urdu has also been neglected by the government,” said Aleemuddin, headmaster of a government high school.
While majority of students have access to DD Yadagiri, T-SAT continues to be elusive on several DTH platforms such as Tatasky, SunTV and DishTV. “@RNTata2000 sir @TataSky is not carrying @TSATnetwork channels. Vidya and Nipuna are the government of Telangana education channels. Students of government schools are unable to access the television classes that started today. Pls help sir. Similar channel Kite Victers of Kerala govt carried,” tweeted Shailesh Reddy, chief executive officer of T-SAT Network.