Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has set up an eight-member committee which will help implement compulsory Marathi education in schools across the state.
The committee will draft rules regarding the implementation of ‘The Maharashtra Compulsory Teaching and Learning of Marathi Language in Schools Act, 2020’.
The committee will be headed by State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) Director Dinkar Patil.
As per the Act, teaching and learning of Marathi will be compulsory from Class 1 to 10 across all Boards and schools in Maharashtra.
Section 16 (1) of the Act allows the state to frame rules for the law that came into being on April 1.
According to a state notification, the rule will be implemented in three phases. For the 2020-21 academic year, Class I and Class VI students will be mandated to study Marathi, followed by Class II and Class VII in 2021-22, Class III and Class VIII in 2022-23, Class IV and Class IX in 2023-24 and Class V and Class X in 2024-25.
Special focus will be given to listening, speaking, reading and writing skills of students in Marathi from classes I to V and self-expression and comprehension will be the focus from classes VI to X.
For students studying in languages other than Marathi, the learning and difficulty levels of the subject as well as the Union government’s three-language rule will apply.