German ambassador to India sees 1 million students by 2017

This article is painfully short and lacking in detail, and alludes to a plan by the German government (I assume) to expand some program to teach German from 300 schools to 1000 schools, resulting in a million Indian students with basic German knowledge.

The language of "poets and thinkers" (Dichter und Denker) will be heavily promoted on the Indian subcontinent in the coming years. In more than 1000 Indian schools children will soon learn German. "By 2017 a million Indian students will have at least a basic knowledge of German", said the German ambassador in India, Michael Steiner, in New Delhi. "This is an ambitious goal", he admitted. The program has already been in place at 300 schools, with success. Steiner said that he saw open-minded, talented students everywhere who had a passion for learning German: "Now we need ways to train the teachers more efficiently." The German classes were overrun, he said, there not being enough German teachers in the country.

Assuming this is cumulative (not one million per year), about two hundred students learning German per school could do it. Let's assume this program started in 2011 with 100 schools:

2011: 100 schools, 20,000 students
2012: 300 schools, 80,000 students
2013: 500 schools, 180,000 students
2014: 700 schools, 320,000 students
2015: 900 schools, 500,000 students
2016: 1000 schools, 700,000 students
2017: 1000 schools, 900,000 students

That's probably the kind of assumption the number a million is based on.



A search also turns up this article from late 2012 on the same subject. Yes, it's the Goethe-Institut which is carrying out this ambitious program.