On 02/Oct/2006, at 4:56 AM, Nishant Shah wrote:
It suddenly struck me...does this affect your parents' school as well?
No, no affected. There are enough ambiguities to slip through.
According to mom*, this is undoubtedly a scam to extract money from
school managements, but it won't be explicitly in the form of
licenses. Instead, it'll be as party campaign fund contributions.
Any school in Karnataka state that is not affiliated to the state
board must get a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to affiliate
elsewhere, such as to CBSE or ICSE. However, since 1994, the NOC has
included a clause that requires compliance with the language policy
of the state. This means all CBSE and ICSE schools opened since 1994
are also in violation of the law and liable to being shut down. None
of them were targeted this time, because it's an obviously stupid
thing to attempt.
Mom mentioned a Supreme Court directive that says the right to decide
what school a child attends belongs to parents, not to governments,
and that there is no requirement for a school to be officially
recognised. The SC also said it is preferable that primary education
be in the child's mother tongue (but not mandatory). Nothing prevents
a school from asking parents to declare that their child's mother
tongue is English at the time of admission (since there's no clear
procedure for determining mother tongue), and stick that to a
government that mandates Kannada.
This means the KA govt's decision is hinged solely on the schools
having agreed to the govt's requirement, where the govt's requirement
is in violation of a higher authority's guidelines.
Therefore the logical course of action is to appeal to the higher
authority, which may be what we'll see happen over the next few months.
* Mom's been a school principal three times in over fifteen years,
twice as founding principal and most recently as owner. She knows her
way around the maze.
--
Kiran Jonnalagadda
http://jace.seacrow.com/
