Gujarati tuition, Class 1 to 10

The Compulsory Teaching and Learning of Gujarati Language Act 2023 mandates Gujarati teaching from Standard 1 to Standard 8 across all Gujarat schools, regardless of board, with most schools offering it through Standard 10. This recent law fills a real gap: previously, some CBSE and ICSE schools in the state taught no Gujarati at all, or offered it informally only. That loophole is now closed.

For families newly arrived in the state, this means your child will take the Gujarati exam. If her previous school didn't teach Gujarati at all, she's starting from zero—script included. This requires direct, focused attention rather than being absorbed into general study help.

The first thing a Hindi-reading parent notices about a Gujarati page is what is absent: the shirorekha, the continuous horizontal line that runs across the top of Devanagari text and that a Hindi reader's eye relies on, often without conscious awareness, to distinguish where one letter ends and the next begins. Gujarati script evolved from Devanagari but dispensed with that headline entirely, so every letter stands alone with no connecting line.

The consequence is that a letter nearly identical to its Hindi counterpart can still feel unfamiliar on the page, simply because the visual rhythm of the line has shifted. This is worth explaining to your child directly - it removes the frustration of feeling she should recognise something she has not actually been taught yet.

The building blocks, in order:

• સ્વર (vowels) and વ્યંજન (consonants). The foundation set, learned as their own alphabet rather than as "Devanagari without the line".
• બારાખડી (barakhadi). The complete chart showing how each consonant changes when a vowel sign attaches to it - the largest single portion of early script learning.
• જોડાક્ષર (jodakshar). Conjunct consonants, two sounds blended with no vowel between them. Skipped or guessed jodakshar is why a child who knows the individual letters still cannot read a complete sentence.

Many children in Gujarati classes have minimal exposure to the language outside the classroom - perhaps the family has moved for work, or English or Hindi is the family language at home. For these children, learning to decode the script is only half the challenge; the words themselves need to become meaningful.

• Sound before symbol. Your child should hear and speak a word before being asked to read it, not the reverse.
• Vocabulary from daily life first - home, food, school, family - before the words that appear in textbook chapters.
• Speaking in every class. Answering in Gujarati repeatedly, not just reading it aloud, is what transforms decoding into real comprehension.
• Comprehension in Gujarati itself, without routing through English or Hindi translation, since relying on translation becomes a slower habit the longer it continues.

Gujarati spelling follows clear patterns once the script and barakhadi are established. This is worth telling a discouraged child directly - most of the difficulty is front-loaded into the first year or two.

In primary classes, children learn script, vocabulary and basic reading. By the middle years, comprehension passages grow longer and grammar is tested formally, not just picked up in context. The 2023 Act is new, so some CBSE and ICSE schools are still developing Class 9 and 10 options. Examination practices vary more between schools than they do for established state languages.

We work from your child's actual textbook, not a fixed syllabus, because Gujarati schools differ—and like all state language programmes, Gujarati textbooks are updated regularly.

Classes are conducted online, which is particularly well-suited to Gujarati given the variety of backgrounds students bring to it. Some children speak Gujarati fluently at home but need help with exam-level reading and writing; others are encountering the script for the very first time, having never seen it on their previous school's timetable.

• Master the script before the textbook, with the missing shirorekha explained clearly rather than left as an unspoken source of confusion.
• Teach Barakhadi through real words, not isolated memorisation grids.
• Jodakshar practised with intention, since guessing at conjuncts is the most common reason reading progress halts.
• Speaking woven into every class, so comprehension develops alongside decoding, not afterward.

Fees for group and one-to-one classes are listed on the fees page.