Kannada to be Mandatory Subject in Karnataka Schools

In order to make Kannada, the primary medium of education at all the government as well as all the other government aided schools upto class V, the Karnataka legislative has recently passed a bill. The assembly has also passed a bill where students from class I to X in any education institute would have to take Kannada as mandatory subject where Kannada is not compulsory at present. Among the 54,000 schools that are present in Karnataka, almost 1,700 schools have shown their concern over the bill and have expressed doubts regarding selecting Kannada as a medium of instruction.

According to Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 there was a clause that mentioned that the government of any state should give away primary education in a medium that is “as far as possible in mother tongue or Kannada”. In the assembly there was an amendment to this clause of Right to Free and Compulsory Education (Karnataka Amendment), 2015 where they removed the words ‘as far as possible’. The assembly also passed the Kannada Language Learning Bill, under which all the students studying in standard I to X have to take Kannada as compulsory language.

Aarvind Bellada from the ruling party BJP has suggested the state to adopt a dual-language policy instead, under which they could teach students the social science subjects in mother tongue and science and Mathematics in English language, like the rest of north India. According to former Education Minister Visveshwar Hegde Kageri has pointed out that these attempts had been previously made as well, but every time it had failed miserably.

Important Points

• Students from class I to X of in any education institute would have to take Kannada as mandatory subject in Karnataka
• Among the 54,000 schools that are present in Karnataka, almost 1,700 schools have shown their concern over the bill