Telugu-medium enrolment plunges to 5% in AP

Visakhapatnam: Telugu is steadily losing ground in Andhra Pradesh, not only in terms of enrolment, but also in academic performance. Class X examination trends over the last two decades reveal a sharp decline in Telugu-medium education. What once accounted for nearly 80% of student enrolment has now fallen to just around 5%.The SSC examination results further underline this shift. In the Andhra Pradesh SSC 2026 examinations, around 6.2 lakh students appeared for the exam, but only about 30,100 wrote it in Telugu medium. The pass percentage for Telugu-medium students stood at 65%, nearly 21 percentage points lower than the 86% recorded by English-medium students. Telugu medium also registered the lowest pass percentage among all mediums of instruction.The trend has remained consistent over the last five years, with Telugu-medium students continuing to perform below their English-medium counterparts. In 2025, Telugu-medium students recorded a pass percentage of 58.59%, while English-medium students achieved 83.19% — a substantial gap of 24.6 percentage points. In 2024, Telugu-medium students scored 21.24 percentage points lower than English-medium students.The situation was particularly difficult in 2022. Of the 1.89 lakh students who appeared for the SSC examination in Telugu medium, only 82,894 passed, resulting in a pass percentage of around 44%. In comparison, English-medium students recorded a pass percentage of 77.5%, reflecting a steep gap of more than 33 percentage points.Faculty in education, Dr Venkata Rao, said the disparity in pass percentages between Telugu- and English-medium students must be viewed in the context of schooling environments, socio-economic conditions, infrastructure gaps, and the broader learning ecosystem. “Students who opt for Telugu medium generally come from government schools and disadvantaged sections of society. They may not receive the same academic support that students in English-medium private schools get, either from educated parents at home or from schools themselves. Imagine a child who is unable to attend school regularly because the parents are daily-wage labourers,” Rao said.State convenor of the Right to Education Forum, Narava Prakasa Rao, said the shift towards English-medium education has become inevitable in the context of expanding global opportunities, higher education systems that predominantly function in English, and the growing role of English as a universal language. “Parents see it as essential for higher education, employment, and global exposure,” he said. At the same time, the transition should not come at the cost of students studying in the Telugu medium. It is the responsibility of the government and the education system to ensure that children studying in Telugu medium can excel on par with their English-medium counterparts,” said Prakasa Rao.He added that the widening gap in SSC pass percentages reflects deeper inequalities, particularly for students studying in government schools and rural areas.