Telangana: 20 per cent qualifying marks for simple Telugu in Classes IX, X exams

To help non-Telugu speaking children learn the language with ease, the department has come up with simple textbooks.

Hyderabad: Students, whose mother tongue is not Telugu but are pursuing simple Telugu as a compulsory language, are likely to have 20 per cent or 20 marks as qualifying marks of the total 100 in the Classes IX and X exams conducted by the School Education department.

The State government through the Telangana (Compulsory Teaching and Learning of Telugu in Schools) Act 2018 made learning Telugu language mandatory for students in schools affiliated to different boards, including the SSC, CBSE, ICSE and IB, in the State. This implementation was being done in a phased manner since the 2018-19 academic year, starting with Classes I and VI.

During the last academic year, it was implemented for Classes I, II, III, IV, VI, VII, VIII and IX in all schools across the State. This academic year (2022-23), Telugu as a language was made compulsory for Classes I to X in all schools. However, the government gave exemption from learning Telugu as a compulsory language for students from other States enrolling for Class VIII and above in Telangana. But such students have to opt for two other Indian languages which he/she has studied up to Class VII from part-I Indian languages available in the State — Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati etc., as first language and second language up to class X.

To help non-Telugu speaking children learn the language with ease, the department has come up with simple textbooks. ‘Tenepalukulu’ textbook for Classes I-V and ‘Vennela’ for Classes VI-X were developed by the department.

For students whose mother tongue is Telugu and are studying in the Telugu and English medium schools, the department has developed standard Telugu textbooks ‘Jabili’ for Classes I-V, ‘Navavasantham’ for Classes VI-VIII and ‘Singidi’ for Classes IX-X. “There is a plan to have 20 per cent or 20 marks as the qualifying marks for the learners of simple Telugu in the examinations. However, students who study standard Telugu language will have 35 per cent as a qualifying mark out of 100,” an official said.