BENGALURU: Schools that were teaching in English-medium after having received permission to function as Kannada-medium institutes have now been given English-medium status (for Classes 1 to 5).
This comes following a Supreme Court judgment in May. On Monday, the Department of Public Instruction issued Form 4 certificates to all the English-medium primary schools in the state. Form 4 certificate gives legal status to schools to teach in English.
Sources in the department said thousands of schools have benefited from this. D Shashi Kumar, general secretary of the Karnataka Associated Managements of English-Medium Schools (KAMS), said, “After the judgment, the department issued an administrative order under which they (schools) were issued Form 3, through which the Kannada-medium permission was withdrawn. Now we have issued Form 4.”
The Case
After the state government framed a legislation in 1983 making Kannada the mandatory medium of instruction in primary schools, and stopped giving permission to open English-medium schools, private schools filed a petition in both the Karnataka HC and Supreme Court.
In May, a constitution bench of the Supreme Court said the choice of deciding the medium of instruction should be left to the parents. The state was unmoved, and the schools then went to the High Court. The HC directed the government to grant permission to English-medium schools by March 31. The government sought time till May 31, and has now started issuing legalisation certificates.