Silvester D'Souza
Daijiworld Media Network – Kundapur (EP)

Kundapur, Aug 27: The education in Karnataka will witness unprecedented growth in the education sector.  Reports are being gathered from primary and high schools in this respect, said state minister for primary and high school education, Ratnakar Kimmane.

He was speaking after his private visit to Shree Siddivinayaka Temple at Kundapur along with his family.

To journalist’s enquiry that recruitment of more than 4,000 teachers is held up for want of government approval, he explained that it is held up due to Hyderabad Karnataka incident and technical reasons related to it. If it was implemented, as reservation is compulsory under 271 J, teachers from Hyderabad would have come here and local candidates would have lost an opportunity to be employed.

So it was temporarily kept pending, he said. He added that within next month, for the first time in the state, more than 12,000 temporary teachers will be recruited.          

When suggested that permanent teachers could have been recruited instead of temporary ones, he said that there are 51,000 schools in the state and 24,000 posts are vacant. It is not easy to conduct them all of a sudden. The services of temporary teachers will be made permanent considering their performance, he said.

To avoid hardship to students, the services of teachers who are scheduled to retire in between the academic year, will be asked to continue till the end of the year, he said. It has also been proposed to increase the standard of government schools during the next two years. It will cost Rs 80 crores to 150 crores per district. The state will need Rs 6,000 for the purpose. The development will take place in stages in the schools, he said.

When his attention was drawn to land dispute in Byndoor’s Hosokote school, Halthoor school teacher’s problem and Bijooru School building, he said that he was not aware of the problems. Now that he has been made aware of them, he will call for a report and act on it. If there are mentally ill teachers in a school, or those teachers who are unable to conduct classes properly, such teachers will be dismissed or voluntarily retired. There is no need of teacher’s application or petition for it, he clarified.

Minister’s wife Arundhathi, Byndoor area education officer Chandrashekar and Kambadkone group resource person, Jayananda Patagar were accompanying the minister.  

Model School Project:
One school in each of the village grama panchayat levels numbering 5,100 in the state, will be improved and upgraded as model schools with the help of public and donors. The school will be chosen and determined by respective grama panchayats. The names of donors will be published in government’s school website. The project is in progress in some districts in the state but is yet to be implemented in the malnad region. A revolution in education sector waits in the state, he said.