Your right to know whether schools have the requisite permissions

 All schools be told to display affiliation certificates – Commissioner for Public Instruction Mohammad Mohsin

Know your Schools
Parents should have the right to know whether schools have necessary permissions to run their courses. Commissioner for Public Instruction Mohammad Mohsin is planning to do just that, “We have asked our officials to issue circulars to all the schools to display the approval letters from the respective boards to parents.”

Schools in Bangalore primarily follow three types of affiliations.

First comes state government affiliation. Schools affiliated before 1994 can run English medium schools from Standard I to X. Those which subsequently secured affiliations got them with a rider. They can run classes from Standard I to IV/V in Kannada medium, and thereafter in English medium.

Second, there are schools affiliated to the Indian Council of Secondary Education (ICSE) or the Central Board of Secondary Education CBSE). Mohsin said, “If the school has opted for ICSE or CBSE, they need approval letters of the respective boards and also a No Objection Certificate (NOC) issued by the state Department of Public Instruction.

Till now, schools didn’t bother to disclose the approval letters to parents. So we are asking the schools to display the letters so that parents may verify them.” Navya Raj, a parent said, “I too was wondering how my daughter’s school got permission to run the English medium track. But now I am told that the school can teach only in Kannada medium till the fourth standard. With the education department threatening to take action, I am worried. Till now, we used to blindly go by whatever was painted on the school boards.”

The ICSE, CBSE Masala
Another parent Rajiv Reddy said, “These days it has become a fashion for schools to say that they are either affiliated to ICSE or CBSE. But have you ever wondered how institutions can run both state as well as ICSE syllabi schools in the same premises? That too with classes next to each other? I was told that things are arranged in such a way that results in the ICSE stream are always better (say, above 90 per cent). Apparently, schools shift all dull students to the state board stream after Standard VIII, and push the bright students from the state board to ICSE.”

Source: Bangalore Mirror

Date: Oct 25, 2014