Karnataka - Bangalore   

Schools yet to come to grips with court order

B.S. Ramesh

Bangalore: Many schools are yet to come to grips with Monday’s Karnataka High Court upholding the legality and validity of the voluntary scheme offered by the Government for errant schools to fall in line. Though the order is very clear on the application of the scheme, scores of primary schools in and around Bangalore have not understood it.

The order specifically states that it is applicable only to institutions coming under the Karnataka Unaided Schools Management Association (KUSMA) and other schools that have not opted for the scheme, which was formulated by the State on April 12, 2007. This means that apart from 1,400 members of KUSMA and en equal number of other schools, the order will not affect a majority of the 40,000 schools in the State.

According to the scheme, schools will have to start teaching first standard students in the medium of instruction for which they have obtained permission. This may be any of the eight mother tongues recognised by the State Government. Apart from English and Kannada, the recognised mother tongues include Tamil and Telugu. The order has not said anything on the language policy.

The State says that many of the primary schools took permission to start institutions in seven of the eight mother tongues. However, a majority of them started teaching in English, claiming that parental pressure had led them to do so. On the other hand, the State claims that these institutions not only violated the law but also continued to deliberately flout the language policy for several years.

It says inspections revealed that 2,600 institutions had violated the policy on the medium of instruction. These schools had a student strength of three lakh and 12,000 teachers. The State, sources say, came up with the scheme only after it received innumerable complaints that such schools were charging hefty donation for admission of students.

After 1994, the State did not accord permission for setting up English-medium schools. It permitted the opening of more than 7,000 primary schools only after the managements of these institutions gave an undertaking to impart education from the first to the fourth standards in Kannada.

The State claims that it formulated the language policy on the basis of the V.K. Gokak Committee Report. One of the recommendations of the committee was not to sanction any more English-medium schools. Citing an example, it says that though the Education Department had sanctioned Urdu-medium schools in Bhatkal in Karwar district, all of them were found to be teaching in English.

Advocate for KUSMA G.R. Mohan disputes the State’s contention and says a majority of the schools were started before 1994 and the scheme does not apply to them. He says the State had given an undertaking through the then Advocate-General to the High Court promising not to impose the language policy till the case was settled. However, the scheme is a backdoor method of introducing Kannada in schools.

President of the Advocates Association of Bangalore D.L. Jagadeesh, who has appeared for several of the schools, says his clients are not at all against the introduction of Kannada. What they had contested was the attempt by the State to circumvent the language policy of 1994, which has been stayed and impose a language on a child.

Several government advocates who appeared for the State point out that the language policy is not the bone of contention. It is the violation of the medium of instruction that is at the centre of the dispute. They hope that errant schools will accept Monday’s order and fall in line. Otherwise such institutions will be derecognised.

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