Gujarati vs English: Mother tongue tests students' mettle

AHMEDABAD: At a time when the Centre is promoting the use of the mother tongue or local language as a medium of instruction in educational institutes to overcome the language barrier, Gujarat is throwing up an intriguing trend. Turning the notion that people excel in their mother tongue over its head, a higher number of Gujarati medium students for the past two years are failing in their mother tongue subject compared to English!
Recent Class 10 results revealed that 96,287 students failed in Gujarati (first language) subject, while 95,544 students failed in the English (second language) subject, totally accounting for 35% of the 2.6 lakh casualties in the board exams.
In 2022, 17.85% of students failed the Gujarati language subject compared to 10.78% who failed the English language subject. The linguistic tables have turned, marking a departure from the conventional scenario where a larger proportion of students struggled with English rather than Gujarati.