Government schools not 'orphans' to be adopted: Activists in Karnataka speak out

As many as 17 academicians and activists in the education field have taken offence to the use of the word ‘adoption’ in the ongoing school adoption process after the state government constituted a committee to monitor school development programmes.

In a memorandum to the state government, academicians and activists led by Niranjanaradhya VP, Senior Fellow, Centre for Child and the Law, National Law School India University (NLSIU), have said that the term ‘school nurturing’ should be used instead of ‘adoption’, and have iterated that the Department of Public Instruction had already begun a programme called ‘Shalegagi Naavu Neevu’, to mobilise additional support for nurturing government schools through School Development and Management Committees (SDMCs). 

“We note, with deep distress, the announcement by the state government, of a ‘monitoring committee’ to monitor the ‘school adoption’ programme...Government schools are not orphans to be adopted. The parents’ body, established through an Act of Parliament, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, is the parent of the school; hence no authority has a right to give away the school in adoption to anybody else,” they said. 

“The notion of ‘adopting’ a school creates a sense of helplessness, charity, lack of resourcing and abdication by the constitutionally mandated responsibility of the state which is delegated to the SDMC, as well as by its trustee, the state government,” they said. “Today, we are in the era of ‘Rights-based development’ and not ‘Charity-based approach’ of erstwhile monarchies. We request the CM and the Education Minister to set right this mistake,” they added.