Jorhat, July 29: The Jorhat education department has planned special classes for high school and higher secondary school students to develop proficiency in English and Hindi languages.

Resource persons invited by the respective schools will take the classes once a week.

The aim of the initiative is to make the students equipped to speak and write in these languages as required in government or corporate offices, to help them in their career.

The Rashtriya Madhyamik Shikhsa Abhiyan (RMSA) will fund the plan.

Inspector of schools, Jorhat, Kamal Jyoti Gogoi, told The Telegraph here today that the special classes have been planned for the students of Class IX onwards, as it has been observed that students of Assamese-medium schools have less proficiency in English and Hindi languages.

Gogoi is the programme coordinator of the district board of secondary education constituted under the RMSA.

“Our students seem to lack in fluency while speaking the two languages and its application in the offices,” Gogoi said.

He said to build a good career, knowledge in English and speaking fluency was important.

Similarly Hindi, too, was important as it is a communicating language in the country, more so in the northern part of India and is used in central government offices all over the country.

Gogoi said according to the plan, initially around 40 out of 177 schools in the district have been selected for the initiative.

He said the first 40 schools were selected on the basis of performance of students in English.

Schools where students have scored fewer marks in English were considered under the first phase.

Gogoi said the initiative would be launched in August or latest by the first week of September and resource persons comprising retired teachers and teachers in service have been entrusted with the task of preparing a module.

He said about 32 classes have been planned in eight months and these classes were most likely to be held on Saturdays, as there are fewer classes on that day, compared to other working days.

The module will focus on learning of the languages, its use in offices, developing fluency in speaking, and learn the correct pronunciation.

The inspector said evaluation of the students would be done during the period of coaching, but the performance in these classes will not be included in the regular examination of the course.

Gogoi said more schools would be included in the next phase in the coming year.