Maharashtra govt will direct all CBSE and ICSE schools in the state to make Marathi compulsory in their curricula from the next academic session.
NAGPUR: The Maharashtra government will direct all schools in the state affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education and the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (ICSE board) to make Marathi compulsory in their curricula from the next academic session.
The government said it would not grant no-objection certificates to new schools unless they include the subject as one of the two mandatory languages up to the SSC level.
Currently, many schools do not teach the state’s official language. “We will direct all schools to make Marathi compulsory for students from Class I to SSC,” Minister of State for Primary and Secondary Education Hasan Mushrif told the legislative council on Thursday.
Mushrif made the statement while replying to a supplementary raised by NCP member Jeetendra Awhad during question hour. Although the CBSE and ICSE programmes are beyond the state government’s ambit, Awhad said education is a state subject and it is crucial for the government to intervene. In the absence of such a corrective, he warned, Marathi would vanish from the state with schools affiliated to the local board turning to the CBSE and ICSE systems.
The government’s decision has met with stiff opposition from principals of ICSE and CBSE schools in the city, who have refused to abide by it unless directed to by their respective boards. MP Sharma, principal of the GD Somani School, which is affiliated to the CISCE, said: “It is practically impossible for us to make Marathi a mandatory subject as the school is affiliated to a different board devising its own syllabus. This is a forceful imposition.”
But Mushrif, talking to reporters later, cited a Supreme Court judgment that directs CBSE and ICSE schools to teach the language of the state in which they are based.
He said the government would issue letters in this regard to all schools in Maharashtra. “Other states have already implemented the programme,” he said.
There are 177 schools in the state affiliated to the CBSE and ICSE, 44 of them in Mumbai. As many as 520 Marathi sections across the state closed down in financial year 2005-06 for want of students, or because the schools adopted the English medium. Only three of the state board-affiliated schools in Mumbai have moved to the CBSE, the minister told the House earlier.
A PTI report from Bangalore said the Karnataka government has also decided to make it mandatory for CBSE and ICSE schools to teach Kannada from next year. Hitherto, students from other states had the option of choosing Alternative English. That provision will be withdrawn.
With Shweta Shertukde in Mumbai
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