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Don't take action against minority schools, HC tells Education dept.

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI JULY 24. The Madras High Court has restrained the Education department from taking `any coercive action' against private minority schools which did not participate in the district-level common annual examinations as mandated by the Government in March last.

On March 7, 2002, the Government directed all Chief Educational Officers to conduct common annual examinations for Classes VI-IX and XI at the district-level for all private and aided schools. Pursuant to the order, the CEOs asked the aided schools to comply with the scheme. Challenging the GO and the consequent directive, the Tamil Nadu Catholic Education Association moved the court.

Its petition alleged that the CEOs, in their communique, had threatened to reconsider the recognition and withhold the grant-in-aid enjoyed by the schools if they failed to adhere to the scheme. Tracing their right to found and administer educational institutions to Article 30 of the Constitution, the petition alleged that the order amounted to direct interference with the internal administration of the aided schools.

Claiming that the standard of education offered by the members of the petitioner-association was better than that in government/corporation schools, the petition said the impugned action would lower the standards of the minority, aided schools as answer-sheets of the common internal examinations would be evaluated by some other schools. The quality of question papers would not be up to the level of private schools, it added.

The association sought to quash the GO, and prayed for an interim order directing the respondent-officials not to interfere with the internal examinations conducted in member-schools in any manner.

Though Justice A. Kulasekaran, before whom the matter came up for hearing, declined to stay the operation of the GO, he ordered notice to the Government and said: ``The Education Secretary and the Director of School Education are directed not to take any coercive action''.

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