Several schools yet to make Kannada a must

KDA asks Education Dept. to act on it

Several schools across the city have been violating implementation of Kannada in the curriculum, which is mandatory for all from this academic year. Following this, the Education Department officials have been asked by the Kannada Development Authority to ensure that schools start following the rules and initiate action, including de-recognition, against those that fail to comply within the next 15 days.

Kannada as a first or second language was made mandatory for all students after the Karnataka Language Learning Act of 2015 came into force.

“We found that officials have not made field visits in several places and did not give information that we sought. Many officials have not gone to schools to verify the implementation status at all,” S.G. Siddaramaiah, Chairman of Kannada Development Authority told presspersons here on Wednesday. “It is breach of trust on part of the schools that are using infrastructure facilities here. If Kannada does not survive in education, it will not survive in administration,” he said.

According to him, with the exception of Bengaluru South education district, implementation has been poor in Bengaluru North and Bengaluru Rural education districts. “We have asked officials to impose fine and issue notices to withdraw recognition.”

Bengaluru North district, he said, had a “hopeless” monitoring system, and alleged that the authority had rejected the report of the department officials in this respect. “In North 3 district, officials have claimed to have inspected all 524 schools and implementation has been complete. But we do not believe the report since it had several inaccuracies.”

He said: “Officials have given incorrect information. Some schools are not willing to implement. Some schools have told officials that they were teaching Kannada from their own syllabus and not taken government syllabus, but have been teaching Kannada as third language.”

Mr. Siddaramaiah also announced setting up of a squad that will start paying surprise visits to randomly selected schools for inspection. “If we find schools guilty of violating the norms, we will write to the government to cancel recognition immediately.”