Gujarat HC seeks govt’s reply over GUJLISH project in Surat schools – Times of India

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat high court on Tuesday ordered the state education authorities to file a reply over a PIL that has challenged the policy of teaching in the English language to students of Gujarati medium from Class 1 to 10 in Surat district.
The petitioner is claiming that the insistence on English in Gujarati medium schools has rather resulted in a decline in students’ performance in schools where the project has been implemented. During the hearing, the petitioner’s advocate Anand Yagnik complained that more than two years have passed since the state government was told to respond to the PIL, but no reply has been filed. Meanwhile, the government has started implementing the new education policy as well. The bench headed by Acting Chief Justice A J Desai directed the state government and education authorities concerned to reply by August 10.
The PIL has objected to a programme implemented in Surat district under the name of Project GUJLISH in 2016 upon recommendation from the Surat’s district education officer. The Gujarati medium schools were directed to teach basic terminology and main contents of fundamental and elementary subjects like Mathematics, Science and Environment in English language. The project was envisaged to save Gujarati as mother tongue; to increase grasping power of students; to teach them English and for their good performance in competitive and entrance exams. Few schools were chosen for the pilot project and then the model was to be replicated.
The petitioner claimed that none of the objectives has been achieved and they are rather frustrated. Because of this experiment, a decline was noticed in students’ performance, and some had even failed. The students were unable to visualize and understand the basic subjects.
The petitioner has contended that the whole idea of imparting education in one’s mother tongue pales into insignificance and has caused immense hardship to the parents and students because there are many families in which no one is well versed in the English language. They demanded that the project should be stopped because it was implemented without any research.