Bengaluru: The Education Department will receive applications from private educational institutions to start English-medium schools, following the High Court’s recent direction to the government, but it is yet to decide on whether or not to grant permission, Minister of State for Primary and Secondary Education Kimmane Ratnakar has said.
Refusing to accept defeat even after several setbacks in courts on its 1994 language policy which mandated that the medium of instruction should be in the child’s mother tongue or in regional language, Mr. Ratnakar on Thursday said the State government would soon file a curative petition in the Supreme Court, which had quashed the State government’s review petition. “We will receive applications from schools seeking permission for English medium if they meet the necessary criteria. But we are yet to decide whether or not we will grant them English medium status and what the language policy will be for the next academic year. We will hold several more rounds of consultations before deciding on our stance,” he said. Mr. Ratnakar, however, admitted that the State government was bound to follow the Supreme Court’s verdict.
Meeting plan
He said the State government may convene a meeting of Education Ministers of all States to gain support for the language policy. Besides this, he said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had also written to Chief Ministers of other States and may push for a meeting of his counterparts.
Although the department had invited over 40 writers and academicians for the consultation meeting on Thursday, less than 10 of them took part in it.