BENGALURU:
Chief minister H D Kumaraswamy on Thursday said there appears to be a large-scale misuse of the right to education (RTE) provisions in
Karnataka.
In his first meeting of all the principal and additional chief secretaries of all departments, Kumaraswamy said the top priorities of the coalition government was to streamline education, housing and skill development in the state.
During the course of this meeting, Kumaraswamy shed light on serious lacunaes in the RTE act that has resulted in several block education officers (
BEOs) and deputy director of public instructions (DDPIs) colluding with private education institutions to misuse the provisions of the act.
“It has come to my notice that several of these lower rung educational officers have been joining hands with private schools to misuse the admissions through RTE quota,” said Kumaraswamy.
And as part of the clean up, to ensure that actual beneficiaries of RTE quota reap the benefits, one DDPI has already been suspended by the government.
“A few days ago, an incident of misuse came to my notice with one DDPI being suspended from Bangalore north. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of suspicion about the mannerisms and their way of functioning. Accordingly, I have instructed the education department to start collecting the information about the BEOs and DDPIs and curb the misuse of the act,” he said.
Kumaraswamy said the government will be soon bringing changes to the RTE act, for eradicating the existing lacuanes and loopholes.
“This apart, we will be stringently implementing the penal clauses under the private schools regulation act to ensure that RTE quota is available for the actual beneficiaries,” he said.
Kumaraswamy said, on Thursday, the education department secretaries have been given clear instructions to prepare a blue print in implementation of RTE and also to ensure that proper infrastructure is created for upgrading government schools in the state.
Meanwhile, the CM said that his government will not shutdown any Kannada medium schools in the state and will only encourage them with better infrastructure.
He said the coalition regime will be bringing new educational schemes in the upcoming budget abd that there will be an upgradation of the infrastructure in government schools.
“We realise that most parents tend to avoid government schools for lack of English education. Accordingly, we are already setting the stage for English to be taught as a language in the lower kindergarden (LKG) and standard I of government schools,” he said.
Chief minister H D Kumaraswamy.