dehradun

Updated: Feb 25, 2019 11:22 IST

Almost a year after the Uttarakhand education department changed the medium of instruction for subjects like science to English for students of class 3 and class 6, the department was left red-faced when students appearing for home examination for the subject on Friday received the question paper in Hindi.

Asha Painuly, chief education officer of Dehradun, said that after teachers found that the question papers were set in Hindi by the State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT), English teachers in the schools translated the questions for the students.

Question papers for all examinations are set by the SCERT which are printed by district level officials before being sent to the schools.

A senior official with SCERT Uttarakhand, on condition of anonymity said, “We had set papers in both English and Hindi and given both soft and hard copies of the same to the education directorate, from where it was sent to the districts.

Officials at the district levels did not check before printing the papers.”

“District level education officers should have printed the question paper based on the medium of instruction used for the given subject (science). What can SCERT do if they did not check it on time?” added the senior official.

Seema Jaunsari, director of academic, research and training at SCERT could not be contacted despite attempts till the filing of this report.

The state education department had switched to English as the medium of instruction for science at the start of the academic session 2018-2019. With the aim of making students fluent in the language, the department plans to make the change in other classes and subjects as well in the coming academic session.