The central government-run Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti has cleared the decks for its schools to hire Sanskrit teachers, which will allow these schools to teach the language as an optional subject.

Sanskrit was already an optional subject under the Central Board of Secondary Education, to which these schools are affiliated, but none of the NVS schools offered the subject because of a lack of clarity on the criterion for hiring Sanskrit teachers.

This month the NVS issued a letter to its 600-odd schools clarifying that if 15 students in a school opt to learn Sanskrit, the principal can hire a teacher on contract.

“Now the principal can hire a Sanskrit teacher. Earlier there was no clarity,” NVS commissioner B.K. Singh said.

The medium of instruction in NVS schools is Hindi or a regional language up to Class VIII, and English thereafter for mathematics and the sciences while the social sciences are taught in Hindi. The pupils also study three languages compulsorily in Classes VI to VIII — Hindi, English and an Indian language of their choice.

The NVS runs residential schools in rural areas, with 75 per cent of their pupils from the neighbourhood and 25 per cent from villages or cities in the district. Admission is granted through an entrance test.