Urdu's last sigh

Satya Narayan, a teacher at one of the Urdu primary schools, was attending a workshop with some 50 other teachers at the Jamia Millia Islamia University. The workshop was on how to improve their Urdu writing. However, for Narayan, concentrating proved to be difficult as he found himself worrying for the 150 students back in school who would have to forgo their studies for the three days that the workshop was being conducted.

His absence from his school meant that the students who came there would return without being taught. "I am the only teacher teaching at the Mongol Puri Urdu medium school. I teach all the subjects and to all five sections," he says. Each teacher attending the workshop that day at the Jamia Millia Islamia University had their own story to share about conditions of Urdu medium schools in India.

There are more than 1,000 schools in the country imparting education in Urdu medium. Earlier there were no institutes for the Urdu medium schoolteachers to update themselves, like their English counterparts can do through SCERT or NCERT. "The government has since then took steps towards the promotion of Urdu language and for uplifting the standards of Urdu and Urdu medium teaching in the country. Three centres for the professional development of Urdu teachers were sanctioned at the Maulana Azad Urdu University, the Aligarh Muslim University, and the Jamia Millia Islamia University. Apart from running training programmes, these centres also come out with help-books, handbooks, Urdu style manual reference books and other teaching and reading material as per requirement of the teachers and school syllabus. The three-day workshop was part of this effort," clarifies Ghazanfar Ali, director, Academy of Professional Development of Urdu Medium Teachers (APDUMT).

Full report here Times of India