State Government decides to scrap RTE

Mysuru: The State Government has decided to open English medium section in 1,000  Government Schools from next academic year in the State. It also decided to scrap Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009.

With the objective of making Kannada-medium Government School students ready to compete with those from private English-medium schools, the Education Department here has taken a significant decision to start English-medium classes in Government Schools in the State.

In a bid to provide quality education to rural students, the Government has decided to start the English medium in selected schools. It will start admission to English medium from Class 1 and 5th standard from the next academic year. The Government has already started the process of recruitment of teachers exclusively to teach English medium students besides to prepare syllabus and to conduct the exams.

One of the main reason for starting English-medium classes is that parents in even rural areas want their children to study in English-medium schools as English has largely become inevitable for better career prospects at the global level compared to regional language.

Despite having Government School in their locality, parents send their children to far off places to English schools. Starting English classes would not only help in retaining students in Government Schools, but would also encourage the parents to send their children to such schools.

The State Government has also decided to scrap the RTE and use Rs.400 crore grant of the same for the development of these English medium Government Schools. Government is reimbursing the fees to private schools for 25 percent quota admissions under the RTE Act. Moreover, the State Government is worried over student strength in State-run schools was declining as parents preferred to send their children to private schools under the RTE quota. Nearly 5000 private schools are surviving only because of the funds they are availing under RTE quota. The steep hike in expenditure reimbursement has also become headache to the Government.

The State Govt. has increased the expenditure per child from Rs.5,924 to 8,000 for pre-primary school students and from 11, 848 to 16000 for others. Besides this, the number of students admitted under the quota has been steadily increasing every year.

As many as 4.5 lakh students have been migrated to private schools from Government Schools after the implementation of admissions to private schools under RTE quota from last four years in the State. Shockingly, most of the Government Schools are facing the closure threat after introduction of RTE in the State.

Chief Minister writes to Principal Secretary Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy had already written a letter to Principal Secretary to Government Education Department (Primary and Secondary Education) Dr. Shalini Rajneesh to take all necessary steps to open English medium schools from next academic year. He also directed her to scrap RTE and stop releasing funds to private schools under RTE admissions quota. He has told to utilise RTE reimbursement funds to train the teachers of government schools and recruit teachers to English Medium.

The Chief Minister said that he himself feels hesitant to speak in English because of grammar mistakes and fluency issues. The CM wants all our Government School teachers to come out of such insecurities and to be confident and competent. The CM, however, ruled out any impact on students already admitted under the quota and said they would receive education till Class 10.  There are 43,712 lower and higher primary schools and 4,681 high schools in the State. As many as 44,57,535 students are studying from Class 1 to 10 in a total of 48,393 schools in the State.