Marathi to be mandatory in all schools?

Mumbai: The Maharashtra government is mulling to make Marathi compulsory from class 1 to 10 in all schools. State education minister Vinod Tawde on Tuesday said this in the Legislative Council.

Mr Tawde said this in a written reply to a question by Sena MLA Vilas Potnis which contended that states such as West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Kerala had made their local languages compulsory in schools from Class 1st to 10th.

Mr Potnis was asking information on what action the Maharashtra government had taken on demands made in order to make Marathi compulsory in schools. In his response, Mr Tawde said, “The proposal is under consideration of the government.” Later, speaking to the reporters, he said that making Marathi compulsory in all schools was ‘difficult’.

The idea has been pending since long and thus no firm decision has been made yet, he added.

When it comes to the Maharashtra state board schools and colleges (till class 12th), Marathi is a third compulsory subject for the students, English and Hindi languages being the first and second one in case of English medium school.

The order of importance of these subjects change according to medium of the schools. But English, Hindi and Marathi languages remain in the first three-languages category.

However, in other boards, Marathi is an optional subject. Students under these boards who wish to replace the subject with other subject or languages like History, Arts, French, German, etc can choose accordingly.

The new move, as per Mr Tawde, hence will be only applied to these board schools where currently Marathi is an optional subject.