BENGALURU: In the light of starting English medium classes for the students of Classes 1 to 5 in government schools across 15 districts, the department of school education and literacy (DSEL) provided training to teachers to teach the language, but only for five days.

Teachers who underwent this training have raised concerns that five days were not sufficient for them to learn the language and teach students, with the schools to open within one and a half months. “Though the government’s website states that the training is meant for 15 days to help use active, learner-centered, language-supportive pedagogies, the actual training was only for five days,” they said.

A government school teacher in Belagavi district told TNIE, “Some government teachers were selected and trained as resource persons to teach us English. Some of them did not even have any English teaching background. They were Kannada language teachers who weren’t equipped to teach us the language or its use in the classrooms.

The department of state educational research and training prepared the material to train teachers, which is bulky. It will take at least two days for any person to go through it before teaching the same to others.” Meanwhile, another teacher who was a taluk-level resource person, said,

“The training was up to the mark because we were evaluating SSLC exam papers and at the same time, attended Population Census training. Forget teaching students, a lot of teachers don’t even know how to frame a sentence in English. Hence, a five-day training will never be helpful.”

Prof Purushotham Bilimale, the chairman of the Karnataka Development Authority, agreed that even the basics of any language cannot be learnt in five days. He said, “The government must recruit teachers who have an English background. Otherwise, it will result in bad learning of the language among students and impact their results.”

This story has been written by Rashmi Patil.