BENGALURU: The education department is on its way to quadruple the number of model public schools in the next three years. It has already issued guidelines to the district officials concerned to register schools under their ambit. By July 15, district officials will send their lists of schools that will be remodelled as Karnataka Public Schools (KPS).
The number of such schools stands at 276 at present, and will be increased by another 724 to bring them to a round figure of 1000, as promised by the Chief Minister in his 2019-20 budget speech. While the present number of KPS schools caters to each assembly constituency (224 in total), the three-year plan will bring schools to many villages. Each constituency will have a maximum of four KPS schools. However, the department has stressed on equitable and not equal distribution of the schemes, as some constituencies are likely to have more schools that are eligible for the scheme than others.
Several criteria have been highlighted by the department for schools to get a priority in being upgraded to KPS. Government schools that have started English medium in their pedagogy will be given preference. So will schools that have increasing enrolment rates. Schools in villages that have more than three-acre lands at their disposal will too get priority. Taluks with no KPS schools will be considered before others.
KPS schools follow the Kendriya Vidyalaya model of education and the infrastructure is aimed at seamless education for students from pre-school to pre-university level. This aims to give quality education for free to students, who come from financially poor backgrounds. Such schools have been a hit in rural areas, especially with their English medium classes.