Parents as well as parents’ associations were taken aback when the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) posted the names of illegal schools on its website. As per the final list, as many as 1,266 schools in Bengaluru South and North have been listed as illegal and unauthorised.
This includes several top schools and also over 50 schools who claim to have CBSE and ICSE affiliation. A parent, whose child is enrolled in a reputed private school and was shocked to see the name on the institution on the website, said, “We are going to seek an explanation from the school this week.”
Most of the violations are for pre-primary classes. As many as 678 schools do not have permission to run pre-primary classes, while 59 do not have permission to run classes one to five and 415 have been running classes six to eight illegally. Fifty-seven schools do not have permission to run high school classes.
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Commissioner for Public Instruction Mohammad Mohsin said that managements had to check the list on the website and reply within 10 days to the Block Education Officer. “We will decide what action to initiate based on the reply and ensure that children’s interests are not affected,” he said. He also said that the department had not yet decided students would be admitted under the RTE quota in schools that had illegal pre-primary classes or class one.
Those who wish to access the list can log on to www.schooleducation.kar.nic.in.
Sources in the department said that the list of illegal schools outside Bengaluru, which is smaller, would be made public shortly.
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