BENGALURU: As School Education and Literacy Minister Madhu Bangarappa is going full steam establishing Karnataka Public Schools (KPSs) across the state – despite his assurance of not closing existing government schools in Karnataka – it is mostly the rural students who are at the receiving end.
The students being shifted to KPSs from their local schools are facing severe socioeconomic hindrances that undermine the potential of any sustainable education for them, let alone a holistic one. The minister has been consistently batting for the KPS model of education, which envisions unified campuses for education from the pre-primary to pre-university levels. A couple of months earlier, Bangarappa announced that 1,000 KPSs would be established across Karnataka in phases.
However, education activists and some officials within the department believe that the move will have grave consequences. Personnel at the state government’s School Development and Monitoring Committee (SDMC) are equally concerned by the developments.
“Although he (Madhu Bangarappa) said during the legislative session that he would not close down any government schools, on the contrary, there are attempts to do so. The Right to Education Act accounts for neighbourhood schools within walking distance as a very clearly defined responsibility of both local bodies and the state government,” said Dr NiranjanaradhyaVP, the chief convenor of the People’s Alliance for Fundamental Right to Education.
An SDMC member from Chitradurga told TNIE, “The school in my neighbourhood has around 90 students, and all of them are eager learners. The closure of this school will be damaging for their development. Many of their parents are farmers who cannot afford to send them to faraway KPSs.”
The SDMC member also cited child labour as an obvious consequence of the development, with parents ultimately giving up on their children’s education. “Many have stopped sending their children to school and have started taking them to the farmlands instead. This leaves the children destined to spend the most developmentally crucial years of their lives in daily toil,” he said.
Dr Niranjanaradhya raised the question of community as a pedagogical necessity, noting how important it is for children – especially at early developmental stages – to stay in proximity of their respective communities. “They are deprived of interacting with their own circles and family, which is the essential future of a type of education where socialisation is the main objective. There are various models across the world where low attendance has never been a variable in the denial of a fundamental right,” he said.