Board wrote letter to school principles “Chinese could not be introduced as a third
lang. and interested students can tie-up with Pvt. online edu. CBSE intends to develop
of trained Chinese teachers.”
CBSE introduced Chinese as a third language in 2011 but none
of the teachers could pick up the language, prompting the board to withdraw the
language from the syllabus for the time being. Interested students, it
added, may be sent to a private online educational firm to learn Chinese as a hobby
and each has to pay
1,600 for it. After discussing the modalities of training Indian teachers with Chinas
education minister Yuan Guiren, HRD minister Kapil Sibal said in September 2010
that students in large numbers would learn Chinese and 200 Indian teachers would
be trained in the first phase.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) then announced the introduction
of Chinese starting from Class VI from the 2011-12 academic session as the third
language (optional). But the initiative has failed to kick off as the school teachers
allegedly failed to learn the language and the Chinese language training arranged
by CBSE was discontinued mid-way. On January 9th, 2012, the board wrote to school
principals and Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathans administration, stating that due to
non-availability of teachers, Chinese could not be introduced as a third language
at this point and that classes could be arranged for the interested students in
collaboration with the private online education provider.
The letter also stated that CBSE intends to develop a pool of trained Chinese teachers.
When the initiative was announced, a select team of teachers was to go to China
for training, but it never happened. CBSE then asked interested schools to send
teachers for training at the CBSE headquarters. Around seven schools in NCR showed
interest and sent their teachers for the board-arranged training. But the resource
person, who had tried his level best, discontinued mid-way as the teachers were
either not interested or failed to pick up the language. The resource person expressed
his dissatisfaction at the progress of the teachers and after three-odd weeks, the
training had to be discontinued, said a senior CBSE official on the condition of
anonymity. The schools TOI contacted refused to comment.
Courtesy: Times of India
