Page 22 - EW September 2025 Final

Education News

admissions restricted to a small mi- the associate national
nority of “talented and deserving mer- and link language of
itorious students” will leave children India. Reiteration of
from poor and marginalised house- the three language
holds behind, and/or prompt parents formula in NEP 2020
to force children into cramming and has prompted Tamil
tuition culture at early age. Nadu and Karnataka
“Token show-piece initiatives such to reject NEP 2020
as CM Shri schools have been intro- and promulgate their
duced since the time when Sheila own SEPs (state edu-
Dixit was chief minister of Delhi. The cation policies). Fol-
AAP government followed this model lowing Tamil Nadu’s
which has been dressed up by Delhi’s lead which enacted its
new BJP government. Establishment SEP last month, the
of a few showroom model schools Congress-ruled Kar-
is not in the public interest because nataka government
it will lead to a scramble for admis- Shashi Kumar: 25 years regression is studying a draft
sion. It will generate anxiety and bur- SEP 2025 presented
den young children with pressure to ly acclaimed as a visionary policy to it on August 8 by a committee
study for admission tests and exams. document which mandates a slew chaired by former University Grants
Instead it would have been better for of reforms to revolutionise India’s Commission chairman Sukhdeo
the new BJP government to distribute moribund education system. Thorat. The Karnataka draft SEP
available resources among all govern- Indisputably, although NEP (not released officially) reportedly
ment schools to improve their infra- 2020 mandates an alphabet soup of recommends that all children learn
structure gradually,” says Dr. Amit government committees to super- only two languages — mother tongue
Chandra, CEO of the Centre for Civil vise and monitor Indian education or Kannada and English. This has
Society, Delhi, a highly reputed educa- — a strategy criticised by Educa- generated Karnataka’s own language
tion-focused think tank. tionWorld — it contains several wars.
Clearly education of the country’s commendable, overdue mandates. he proposal in Karnataka’s SEP
high-potential child and youth is not Among them: compulsory universal Tfor children to learn only in
a high priority for the BJP government early childhood education; com- mother tongue or Kannada until
at the Centre — now in its third term pulsory vocational education in class V and even upto class XII, has
in office — or in the states. Despite primary-secondary schools; depar- drawn sharp criticism. “Propos-
repeated promises made in its mani- ture from rote learning to analyti- als in this draft will take Karnataka
festos to increase the annual national cal learning in primary-secondary children back at least 25 years in
expenditure on education to 6 percent education; institutional autonomy time. Mandating mother tongue or
of GDP, neither the BJP at the Centre and research focus in higher educa- Kannada as the compulsory me-
nor in the states is serious about ful- tion etc. dium of instruction in all public and
filling this vow. Instead it presents the However ill-advisedly, NEP 2020 private primary schools is regres-
populace show-piece initiatives such also resurrected the ghost of the sive. The Supreme Court in State of
as PM Shri and CM Shri schools. three-languages learning formula Karnataka vs. Associated Manage-
Sandeep Sen (Delhi) for all school children. Several state ment of Schools (2014) clearly ruled
governments of peninsular India that parents have the right to choose
KARNATAKA have interpreted this provision as the medium of instruction for their
Internal languages imposition of Hindi, the national children, and that the state cannot
language and dominant language of
impose the medium of instruction.
war the populous but socio-economically The two-language formula which al-
backward BIMARU (Bihar, Mad-
lows for education in mother tongue
hya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar goes against the state’s own agenda
resented to the nation on july Pradesh) states, upon the states of to promote Kannada as a compulsory
29, 2020, after a hiatus of 34 southern India. language statewide. For instance,
Pyears, the 66-page National This issue which had provoked in schools which choose Urdu as
Education Policy (NEP) 2020 based riots and threats of secession in the the mother tongue and English as
on the 484-page draft of the Dr. K. 1960s had then been resolved by second language, Kannada will be
Kasturirangan Committee was wide- adoption of English (aka Inglish) as neglected. There are sufficient stud-

22 EDUCATIONWORLD SEPTEMBER 2025