Government to include educationists in panel on private schools

The Tamil Nadu government has agreed to include three experts in the field of education in the panel constituted to deal with the issues.

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has agreed to include three experts in the field of education in the panel constituted to deal with the issues including minimum land requirement and other basic facilities in 746 private schools in the State, which have been declared unauthorised.

The first bench of Chief Justice SK Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan, before which the statement was made by Advocate-General, posted to December 22, further hearing on the PIL from A Narayanan, director of ChangeIndia, an NGO.

The AG told the bench that norms have been worked out, but conceded that the committee consists of only bureaucrats manning the departments concerned with education. Since earlier recommendations include educational experts also, the AG added that three educational experts in the previous committee could be included in this committee, which may finalise the report developed by the committee of bureaucrats. As suggested by the petitioner, the bench said the committee may keep in mind the observations made by the Supreme Court while dealing with Kumbakonam fire tragedy case.

The three educational experts included in the present panel are SLChittibabu, Lalitha and SS Rajagopal.
As per the earlier directive of the court, Education Secretary D Sabitha was present in the court.

In his PIL, Narayanan sought to quash a GO dated August 18, 2015 of the School Education secretary and consequently to forbear the authorities from granting recognition to unrecognised schools not fulfilling the norms specified in various GOs and the judgment of the Supreme Court and ensure that they all were closed down by the end of the 2015-16 academic year. The displaced students shall be admitted in neighbourhood government/government aided/unaided schools so as to enable them to continue their education, petitioner had prayed.
 

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