So-called International schools, first follow the state!!

On Monday the Karnataka High Court ordered schools affiliated to the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) syllabus to follow the Karnataka Education Act (KEA), 1988, when hiking school fees.

The Karnataka High Court held that all private unaided schools in the state imparting education in Indian Certificate of Secondary Examination (ICSE) and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) syllabus should adhere to the Karnataka Education Act, 1983.

This has been a landmark judgment considering that some of the schools were charging fees in range of 2-5 lakhs per year for middle school or high school. In order to preserve ‘elite’ness and to have a ‘rich’ status symbol attached; these schools had been raising fees and charging enormous amount of fees every year after year. The accounts should be audited and it should be made sure that the unaccounted admissions and donations are curbed by having proper accounting system.

They schools are very lenient on Kannada as the third language and most of them are offering to study French or even Spanish in order to give an international feel. There is no use in educating a kid to speak the lingua franca of the West when it cannot speak the local dialect correctly. The International schools have come up with the sole purpose of taking care of NRI kids.

The ICSE and CBSE schools have been given exemption from property tax, concessions in electricity tariff and Karnataka Motor Vehicles Tax by the state government. When these schools are enjoying the benefits given by the State govt. ; it also makes a moral obligation to give back something to the state. It should ensure that kids studying in these schools dont miss out on knowing the rich language, culture, art and history of the place. Government should step in and ensure that kids educated here are not felt out from the main stream and forced to study foreign languages in the name of international schools.

According the Karnataka education act, government will now have control over the curriculum and it has to ensure that kids develop basic linguistics skills and literary appreciation of Kannada. Even, the study of social science w.r.t State should be imparted so that they know the history, geography and civics. This would ensure that they would be able to join the mainstream seamlessly and create a nice better and homogenized society.

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