Gandhinagar: The State assembly today passed a bill mandating compulsory teaching of the Gujarati language as a subject in schools across the State from class 1 to class 8. The bill was passed unopposed with the support of opposition parties.

The bill when becomes law will be effective from the new academic year of 2023-2024 in all schools across the State including the schools functioning under the Gujarat Education Board,  Central Education Board, and all other boards including the minority schools. The schools that breach this rule for the first time will face Rs. 50,000 fine. For the second and third breaches, the schools will attract fines of Rs. 1 lakh and 2 lahks respectively. Beyond the third violation, the school will lose permission to function.

The Government will give responsibility to senior officials to ensure the implementation of the new law. In some cases, i.e. parents who are in the armed forces, or those in Gujarat from other States can apply to exclude their children from the provision of the new law and submit an application for the same before the relevant office of the Education department.

As per the provisions of the bill, the schools will require to teach the textbooks approved by the State government. The education department had through a resolution on 13th April 2018 made Gujarati language education mandatory in all schools other than Gujarati medium schools for classes 1 and 2 from the academic year 2018, class 3 from 2019, class 4 from 2020, and likewise till class 8. However, it was found that some schools were not obeying this rule.

Education minister Dr. Kuber Dindor while introducing the bill said that CBSE< ICSE< IB< SGBSE, CIC affiliated primary schools are increasing. In such schools, the medium is English while Hindi and other foreign languages are taught as other languages, but Gujarati language education is ignored. DeshGujarat

DeshGujarat