Karnataka Govt using RTE to promote private schools: HD Revanna

Bengaluru: Claiming that the state government was closing down Kannada medium schools and promoting private English medium schools in the guise of implementing the Right To Education Act, Janata Dal(S) leader H.D. Revanna on Friday demanded that the practice of admitting poor students to private schools under RTE be scrapped from the next academic year.

Speaking to reporters here, he said over 2,500 government primary schools had closed down over the last two years and another 4,000 headed for closure.

Meanwhile, the government had permitted opening of 15 private English schools in every taluk and was transferring students from its school to them under RTE, Mr Revanna said.

“Over the last four years, the government has spent over Rs 2,200 crore on this and now that its own schools are left with only a few students, it has decided to close down those that have less than 10 left,”  Mr Revanna said.

Pointing out that states such as Tamil Nadu and Bihar had not implemented RTE and were still providing good education to the poor, he said when the Union government was  not contributing financially towards the scheme, there was no need for the state government to spend huge sums on it.

Instead, it should be improving the facilities in its schools and retaining their students, the JDS leader argued.

“Today  80 students are dumped in one room, which cannot accommodate even 40 in a government school. And if there are two teachers, one is transferred,” he said.