ISLAMABAD: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province government, led by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, has changed the medium of instruction in public schools from Urdu to English from April 2014.
The change was effected to bring public schools at par with private schools in the province and provide uniform education to all schoolchildren. However, it seems that before taking the step the KP government did not undertake any research or study on the subject to find answers to some key questions like — what is the preferred medium of instruction by parents, students and teachers?
In order to understand the perceptions of stakeholders about their preferred medium of instruction one first needs to know about the most commonly spoken languages in KP.
According to the 1998 Census, 74 per cent of the population of KP speaks Pashto, 3.9 per cent Seraiki, 1 per cent Punjabi, 0.8 per cent Urdu and 20.4 per cent speak other languages. A more recent household survey by Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2012 shows that the four commonly used languages in the province are: Pashto (77 per cent), Hindko (11 per cent), Seraiki (3.5 per cent), Chitrali (3 per cent) and others (5.5 per cent).
INTERNEWS
