Nagpur: The Maharashtra State Minority Commission has sent a proposal to the state education department to appoint permanent Marathi language teachers in the state’s Urdu schools to teach the subject from the first grade.
Commission chairman Pyare Khan stated that this proposal will be implemented from the academic session 2025-26. To ensure that students in Urdu schools also have knowledge of the Marathi language, learning Marathi is being made mandatory, he said. As part of this initiative, a meeting was held in Nagpur between Khan and teachers from the Marathi Foundation.
In the meeting, teachers from the Marathi Foundation presented several issues, including the declining standard of the Marathi language in Urdu schools, salaries of Marathi teachers, students’ lack of interest in Urdu, and the appointment of non-Marathi teachers for Marathi. This has led to a continuous decrease in the number of qualified teachers in the state.
Previously, there were over 4,500 Marathi teachers in Maharashtra’s Urdu schools, but now the number has reduced to only 500, with only 26 teachers working in Nagpur, Khan said. This shortage of teachers is affecting the teaching of Marathi language in Urdu schools.
Khan expressed serious concern over this situation and assured the appointment of new teachers to increase the number of Marathi teachers. He also mentioned that temporary teachers in Urdu schools will soon be made permanent.
The meeting also discussed that currently Marathi is taught only in the 8th, 9th, and 10th grades in the state’s Urdu schools, leading to students not giving it much importance or learn it properly. “Therefore, it is necessary to make Marathi compulsory from the 1st grade, which will benefit students in competitive exams,” he said.
Khan said that Marathi was given the status of a classical language. “To ensure that children in Urdu schools also receive a good education in Marathi, it should be made mandatory to teach the Marathi language from the first grade,” he said. He also emphasized the need for permanent appointments of Marathi teachers in every Urdu school to provide quality education to students.
