The State government is busy browsing through court orders and legislation to find out whether all government employees can be mandated to send their children to government schools.
Last week, officials of the Department of Primary and Secondary Education met with Krishna Byre Gowda, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, who said that officials have been asked to examine if any other laws or court rulings are to be considered before framing the legislation.
An official of the Department of Public Instruction said the meeting was convened to discuss the pros and cons of this rule and whether introducing such an Act would run into legislative hurdles.
The issue came to light in November last year when G. Raghu Achar, Congress MLC, introduced a private Bill in the State legislature to make it mandatory for government employees and elected representatives to send their children to government schools. He had pointed out that the move would help improve the quality of government schools in the State and enrolments in government schools.
The Kannada Development Authority, which had submitted 21 recommendations to improve the State of government schools, had also recommended this measure.
V.P. Niranjan Aradhya, fellow at the Centre for Child and Law, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, welcomed the move and said the Allahabad High Court had recently passed a similar order as they felt that the education department officials were not owning up to the government schools. “The situation is the same across the country where a majority of the children go to private schools and government officials and elected representatives are not worried about public school system,” he said.
He said that once made mandatory, it would eventually be the first choice for them later as the quality of the schools would eventually improve.
