There are only 269 Urdu teachers for 1,700,000 students in 1,024 government schools in Delhi
Tasneem Khan (name changed), MA in Social Science, is a busy woman these days. She has been studying Urdu books, so as to teach students at the Government Boys Senior Secondary School (GBSSS) in south Delhi. Being the only teacher in her school with some knowledge of the language, she has been given the additional charge of teaching students from Class 6-8.
"How can we expect students to develop an interest in the language, without providing them with a skilled teacher," rued Khan, who had last studied Urdu during her school days.
For the last five years, in the absence of teachers, the GBSSS has been arranging faculty for the discipline from other sources. "We have sent multiple requests to the Directorate of Education (DoE) to hire an Urdu teacher for our school but to no avail. We were left with no option but to assign a teacher who was acquainted with the language," the school principal said, requesting anonymity.And this is not a one-off case.
Nearly 100 Delhi government schools are facing the same problem. "For around 1,700,000 students in 1,024 government schools across 12 districts, there are only 269 Urdu teachers, of whom only nine have a post-graduate degree. In comparison, there are 1,895 Sanskrit teachers," reply to an RTI application filed by DNA revealed.
Government schools offer Urdu as an option under the three-language formula, along with Sanskrit and Punjabi, even as classes are held in only 30 per cent of the schools because of the "lack of demand".
According to the National Education Policy, however, a school has to provide a teacher for a subject, in case more than six students opt for it. "Nearly 83,000 Class 6 students in government schools opted for Urdu last year. That means there is only one teacher available for nearly 309 students," a senior DoE official said.
In December 2016, AAP had announced to hire 610 permanent Urdu teachers but the plan is yet to see the light of the day.
“We have written to the state government to inquire about the status of the recruitment process after receiving complaints from several government schools. We are still waiting for any update from their end,” Zafarul Islam Khan, Chairperson of the Delhi Minority Commission, said.
Meanwhile, DoE officials said the delay was due to the lack of “skilled” teachers available for the discipline, a claim to which the Urdu Academy has objected.
“In the last one year, the government has stopped hiring teachers from the Academy. They are neither hiring themselves nor allowing us to help the schools. We receive applications from principals almost every other day,” rued Dr Majid Deobandi, Vice-Chairman of the Urdu Academy, Delhi.
Commenting on the issue, Atishi Marlena, Advisor to Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia, said, “The process of hiring Urdu and Punjabi teachers for Delhi government schools has begun. The matter has been handed over to the Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board (DSSSB). We have made it mandatory for every government school to have a post for these two languages. We are trying our level best to fill the posts through guest teachers, till the time that permanent ones are hired.”
What is Three Language formula?
Under the National Education Policy, students in Hindi-speaking states should learn a modern Indian language (22 languages under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution) — apart from Hindi and English. In non-Hindi-speaking states, they should learn Hindi along with the regional language and English. The formula is applicable till Class 8.
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