State cabinet gives approval for the amendment of RTE Act

BENGALURU: On Wednesday the state cabinet gave its approval for the amendment of the Right to Education (RTE) Act to ensure the primacy of enrolment in the government schools of Karnataka.

The state government plans to amend the Act that will allow parents to enrol their children in private schools only if there are no government schools in the vicinity. The Act defines the vicinity as a radius of 1km.

The state minister for law, Krishna Byre Gowda said that “The primary intention of RTE is to provide education to all class of students. For students from BPL families it is free of cost. Till date, Karnataka had allowed parents to admit children in private schools despite having government schools in the same neighbourhood. This has resulted in the enrolment ratio dropping drastically. We have decided to amend the RTE Act allowing parents to admit children in a private school only if there are no government schools in the vicinity.”

The states like Kerala and Tamilnadu are already having such a law in place and it is said to have yielded with positive results in terms of the number of students enrolling in government schools.

The move was made to reduce the admissions in private schools under RTE which was first initiated in 2017 when the then education minister Tanveer Sait said that the cost of educating children in private schools was a heavy burden on the exchequer. “In the past five years (2013-2017), the Karnataka government has spent over Rs 800 crore to educate children in private schools. It means we have lost so many students to private schools, who otherwise would have studied in our schools. We want to promote government schools.” Sait had said.