India to have 30,000 Japanese language students by 2010

New Delhi, May 20 (UNI) India will meet its target of 30,000 Japanese language students by 2010, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Chairman Ashok Ganguly has said.

''We are introducing Japanese language as an optional foreign language in secondary school curriculum. Out of 9,000 schools, 90 of them have implemented Japanese as an optional subject. Twenty schools implemented it last fiscal and 30 are likely to add it this financial year,'' Mr Ganguly said at the second All India Conference on Promotion of Japanese language education here.

The major hurdle being faced is the non-availability of teachers, he said adding that there should be a paradigm shift in the style of teaching.

In the provisional results of the 2006 survey, it was discovered that there were 1,041 learners in primary and secondary-level school education, 1,444 in formal higher education, and 8,526 in educational institutions outside the formal education system, Yoshiyuki Nishizawa from Japan Foundation said.

The figures suggest that various private sector institutions and organisations outside the formal education system are responding to the demand for Japanese language education among professionals and across a broad cross-section of the general population, who greatly outnumber school-based learners, he added.

University Grant Commission Secretary Tilak Raj Kem said initiatives were being taken to attract students for Japanese language.

UNI