Special Report

English learning fever sweeping India

Even in the lowest strata of society there is a rising tide of demand for English language or ‘convent’ education for the children of the historically dispossessed and deprived. Dilip Thakore reports

Nor is English learning fever unique to China. Right around the world, and especially in the newly independent nations of the former Soviet Union, the scramble to learn English is assuming stampede-like proportions. Ditto in the fast-track nations of South-east Asia, Middle East and South Asia. Even French language champions who at one time entertained visions of la belle langue being accepted as the global language of business and commerce rivaling, if not besting English, have thrown in the towel and currently most young French take pains to learn Anglais.

Against this backdrop of rising English language learning fever around the world, the collective attitude of the Central and state governments in India towards encouraging the teaching of this universal language is at best schizophrenic. Although contemporary India has an English-speaking population estimated at 50-100 million, state governments in particular seem hell-bent upon frittering away this natural advantage. The great majority within post-independence India’s political class associate English language with a century of oppressive British rule of the subcontinent. As a consequence politicians — particularly the new genre of homespun rustic bent — seem to entertain a visceral antipathy to English. This is one reason why they firmly encourage education in vernacular languages on the basis of which the boundaries of the 29 states of the Indian Union were redrawn in 1956 and often subsequently.

But sub-nationalism is only one of the reasons why state level politicians insist upon dominant vernaculars as the compulsory media of primary education and encourage learning in under-developed vernacular languages up to the tertiary level. Another deeper reason is a flourishing nationwide vernacular textbooks writing, publishing, printing and marketing racket endemic to all states (see box p.52).

But even if for professed sub-national identity and cultural reasons politicians seem determined to impose vernacular languages as the medium of instruction in state government schools over which they have absolute control, unknown to them, across the country a quiet English language learning revolution is happening. Even in the lowest strata of society there is a rising tide of demand for English or ‘convent’ education for the children of the historically dispossessed and deprived. This is evidenced by innumerable street corner self-styled private English medium schools which are sprouting in every city, town and even village, across the subcontinent.

Private school class in Tamil Nadu: quiet revolution

Yet even if the people’s representatives are unaware of the extent to which English fluency and familiarity can transform lives and livelihoods, their subjects down to the grassroots level are not as ignorant. This was poignantly highlighted by Amy Waldman a perspicacious New York Times correspondent who toured the Hindi heartland state of Bihar (pop. 82 million), commonly described as India’s poorest, most lawless and backward state, two years ago. In an emotional report titled ‘India’s poor bet precious sums on private schools’ in NYT (November 15, 2003), Waldman describes a four-mile stretch between Manua, a small village in north Bihar, and Hajipur the district capital, where 17 private schools offering English education have mushroomed. Enrolled in them are children of the abjectly poor studying English to fulfill their parents’ dreams of upward social mobility for generation next. She cites the specific case of Ram Babu Rai who farms less than an acre and earns about Rs.1,000 per month working part time and can afford to send only one of his three sons to a private school in Manua. "Just sending one boy is a struggle, costing him Rs.2,200 per year, including the cost of the 10-year old’s orange and navy blue uniform… For some such expenditures by the poor represent a disgraceful abdication by the state, one that creates a class system segregating those with private, English language education from those without," wrote Waldman.

Mulayam: Hindi chauvinism

Although south of the Vindhyas the on-the-ball middle class is only too aware that English is not only the language of business and commerce, but also of the courts, higher education, besides being the link language of the country, the poor majority has to bear the brunt of high-riding language chauvinism. For example, despite years of debate, teaching of English in primary school is prohibited by law in Karnataka (pop.57 million). Upscale schools get around this proscription by affiliating with pan-India examination boards such as the Delhi-based CISCE and CBSE and/or the offshore Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) or IBO (Inter-national Baccalaureate Organisation). But the great majority of children enrolled in the state’s 48,000 government schools begin their academic lives with the permanent disadvantage of relative unfamiliarity with English which they start learning late and even thereafter as a second language. Currently, following a loud demand from the bottom-of-the-ladder Dalit community, a proposal to introduce English as a second language from class I is under consideration of the state government.

In the contiguous southern state of Tamil Nadu (pop.62 million) a similar proposal to prohibit the teaching of English until class V was struck down by the Madras high court in 1999. Since then the state’s imperious former movie star chief minister J.Jayalalithaa has evidently experienced a change of heart. "English is being taught in all schools in Tamil Nadu from class I-XII as a compulsory subject. And although the medium of instruction in all government and aided schools is Tamil, in 2003 the chief minister issued orders for the establishment of 600 English language laboratories in government high and higher secondary schools. An additional 300 will be added by the end of this academic year," says Dr. K. Mariappan, director of elementary education in the state government.

Just how big is the demand surge for English medium education in the western state of Maharashtra (pop.96 million) is indicated by the experience of Mumbai’s vintage Robert Money School (estb: 1836) which offers its students a choice between Marathi or English medium education. "In our Marathi medium section despite education being entirely subsidised by the state government, there are just 70 students. On the other hand in the English medium section where tuition fees average Rs.250 per month, we have 400 students," says Leo Tauro principal of the school.

Meanwhile even as children from the overwhelming number of 160 million poor households across the country struggle to learn English which offers them the ghost of a chance to escape their wretched condition, post-liberalisation India’s acquisitive middle class harbours little doubt that English language proficiency is the absolute prerequisite of social mobility, and perhaps the all-important job overseas. That’s why across the country English teaching shops are flourishing as never before. In Delhi for instance a private tutorial school under the imaginative name and style of Trump & Gates which offers coaching classes for B-school entrance exams (CAT, XAT IIFT), for the entrance tests of American universities (GRE, GMAT) among other public entrance exams, has profitably diversified into providing English language learning classes. Currently almost half of its students are enrolled in its five times weekly English classes for which they pay Rs.3,300 per year.

Trump & Gates’ Gupta (rear): imaginative name and style

Yet the huge disservice visited upon the overwhelming majority of 200 million children enrolled in the nation’s down-at-heel government primary schools by self-serving language chauvinists and myopic politicians, has translated into a huge and growing business opportunity for enterprising educationists. Down south in the port city of Chennai aka Madras (pop.4.2 million), Zeal, a personality and leadership development institute promoted in 1996, started its first Speak Easy centre in 2001. Today there are 30 Speak Easy centres established across the country which provide English language training to 13,000 students. Of these, eight centres are in Chennai where 5,000 students pay Rs.3,500-4,000 for 24 tutorial classes per year.

Rajan: coffee shop ambience

Up north in Lucknow (pop. 1.7 million) the capital of the Hindi heartland state of Uttar Pradesh where uninterrupted political meddling and unchecked student indiscipline has played havoc with the education system, neglect of English is particularly pronounced. That’s perhaps why admission into the much-too-few English medium schools which have struck root in the state despite active discouragement by Hindi language chauvinists, is almost impossible. And why private sector English teaching institutes have sprung up in almost every street corner in the city and are flourishing mightily. For instance the imaginatively titled British School of Languages.

Promoted in 1990 as an institute for coaching students for the state board’s school leaving exams with a complement of five students, BSL which has switched over to teaching conversational English and western etiquette, currently has 1,000 students distributed across two study centres in Lucknow. Each batch of students is given three hours tuition six days per week for a period of three months for a fee of Rs.2,500. "We admit only students with at least primary school level English familiarity. Basic knowledge of the language is a must as we can’t begin with teaching the alphabet. Our student profile is varied and could include a rural mechanic, rich urban housewives, MBA aspirants, doctors, lawyers, teachers and even students from well-known English medium schools. Over the years we have acquired a good reputation for delivering value for money and within the next 12 months we intend establishing at least three more English study centres in the state," says Preeta Sahoo administrative officer of BSL.

BSL’s Sahoo: varied student profile

Comments Rajesh Sharma, a government clerk whose ten-year-old son Rohan is a class V student of the National Degree College, Lucknow, a state government school: "The government is justified in promoting Hindi because it’s true that a child understands best in its mother tongue. But at the same time it must realise that in later years children from government schools become hand-icapped because the best engineering, medical, business management, philosophy, history etc books are written in English. Therefore a good grounding in English is essential. If people cannot afford to send their children to private English medium schools the government should do more than provide the bare minimum in educational standards."

Typically, politicians preoccupied with lofty matters of state and appeasement of shady language chauvinists involved in textbook publishing and printing rackets, have little time or patience to heed the aspirations of the poor at the base of the social pyramid. Therefore increasingly even low income households are beginning to bypass government school systems in favour of low cost schools promoted by brave (because they have to suffer continuous harassment by education department inspectors) ‘edupreneurs’ who promise to provide sustained English language, if not English medium, instruction.

A case in point is the My Institute Upgraded English Primary School (estb: 1962) which provides Kg-class VII English medium instruction to 157 children aged between four and 15 from slum households in Kodandarampuram, a suburb of Bangalore. Despite the children coming from lowest income households their parents readily pay Rs.40-55 per month in the hope their progeny will learn English. As an aided school, My Institute receives grudging aid from the state government which pays the salaries (Rs.4,000-6,000 per month) of the school’s eight teachers. With the school’s management commi-ttee pitching in with ad hoc grants for building and furniture maintenance the school "lives a hand-to-mouth" existence, says a teacher of the school who preferred to remain anonymous.

Given the conspicuous failure of government schools to provide minimally acceptable quality education to the children of the socio-economically disadvantaged, informed opinion within academia is becoming incrementally supportive of private initiatives in low-cost elementary education. "Private schools serving low-income families is a growing phenomenon throughout the developing world and is a major reason for the growing questioning of the role of government in education… In India for instance recent research has revealed a whole range of schools charging about $10 to 20 (Rs.450-900) per year per student, run on commercial principles and not dependent upon any government subsidy or philanthropy. These fees are affordable by families headed by rickshaw pullers and market stall traders," writes Dr. James Tooley, professor of education policy at University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK in his seminal book The Global Education Industry (1999).

But welcome as are private and third sector (i.e NGO) interventions in education, they can at best supplement, not replace, government provision. As Nobel laureate economist Dr. Amartya Sen has observed, no nation worldwide has attained developed nation status by relying upon private initiatives in elementary education. During the past half century since India’s independence, the Union and state governments have established almost one million publicly funded government primary schools across the country. Now as a growing national movement for a common school system testifies (see EducationWorld special report ‘Swelling support for a common school system’, July 2004), genuine educationists are becoming impatient with the failure of the Central and especially state governments, to level up government schools to private sector standards.

English class at My Institute, Bangalore: grudging aid

Two years later, despite such advice having snowballed and a Madras high court judgement having ruled that "the right to education is a fundamental right which includes the right to choose the medium of instruction as well and it can be exercised by parents on behalf of their children", clear government policy statements on the teaching of English in primary and secondary education have yet to be articulated. In most of the 29 states of the Indian Union, it’s business as usual with millions of socio-economically disadvantaged being denied access to English learning despite an all too patent English learning fever sweeping the country.

Meanwhile even as India’s uniquely insensitive political class continues to vacillate and fritter away the nation’s historic English language heritage, in potentially competitive countries around the world, teaching of English — now the indisputably dominant language of business and commerce — from the earliest stages is a global phenomenon. Yet back home despite a rapidly growing number of economically deprived households voting with their pitifully thin wallets for English language education for their children, failing urgent government initiatives, the already wide education and digital divides which separate middle class India from the poor underclass, is set to become wider.

With Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai); Vidya Pandit (Lucknow); Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai); Neeta Lal & Autar Nehru (Delhi)