Vishweshwara Hegde Kageri, Minister for Primary and Second Education, said on Friday that the State government had sent a proposal to the Centre urging it to extend the scope of Right To Education (RTE) Act to include children aged between 6 and 16, as opposed to the current age group of 6 to 14.
He was speaking at the inaugural function of the golden jubilee of the Volakadu Government Composite High School here.
Mr. Kageri said the scope of the RTE should be extended from classes 1 to 8 and from classes 1 to 10. This would help bring more students under the ambit of the RTE Act and would encourage them to take up studies.
All schools in the State would observe Viveka Saptaha from January 7 to 12 to mark the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Swami Vivekananda. Various competitions would be held in schools to mark the event.
Nearly 70,000 government schools, four lakh teachers, and 1.10 crore students in the State would participate in the Viveka Saptaha celebrations. In order to encourage students and old students to develop affiliations with schools, the government had launched the Shalegagi Naavu Neevu scheme, he said.
To improve the descriptive abilities of the students, the government had changed the pattern of question papers in high schools.
Now, 25 marks had been allotted to multiple-choice questions while the students would have to write long or essay type answers for the remaining 75 mark-questions.
Education should shape the character of students. The Volakadu Government Composite High School, with its several achievements, was a model school in the State, Mr. Kageri said.
K. Raghupati Bhat, MLA, Gowri Poojary, president of Udupi Taluk Panchayat, Geeta Shet, Municipal Councillor, Nagendra Madhyastha, Deputy Director of Public Instruction, B. Nirmala Rao, Headmistress of the school and Ashok Kamath, Education Officer, were present on the occasion.
