BC Nagesh at Idea Exchange: ‘The uniform system in colleges was not started by the BJP. No girl left because of the hijab issue’ | Idea Exchange News,The Indian Express
BC Nagesh, began his political career with the RSS, before he joined the BJP in 1984. He was part of the Basavaraj Bommai government in 2021 and has since been in the news for the hijab controversy in junior colleges, changes in school textbooks and cultural referencing in the syllabus.
COVID-19 impacted the education system in ways that can never be quantified. Without in-person classes, the learning curve of our children was badly affected. With the help of our Chief Minister (Basavaraj Bommai), Karnataka was the first State in the country to resume physical classes. Students, who had not attended Class I, had their first in-person experience in Class III. Those who had not taken the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) Examination found themselves in pre-university (PU) classes. Children transitioned to the next level without going through the necessary processes. That’s why we decided to close this learning gap.
With education experts, the State Education Department started the Kalika Chetarike (learning recovery) programme, despite the extra expenditure. This programme is aimed at mainstreaming students, who can’t afford online classes and come from families who don’t care much for education. The programme was intended to bring them up to speed before the next academic year. Today, we have some satisfaction that even the last child will make up and come to school next year as prepared as the privileged students.
Second, Karnataka has one teacher for every 23 students, which is better than the international teacher-student ratio of one for every 30 students. Still, we have many schools without teachers and we have decided to fill vacancies. Karnataka has got a tough appointment system. We have added the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) to the CET (Common Entrance Test). More than 1,50,000 candidates appeared for the CET and about 52,000 candidates have been found eligible. We hope to complete the appointment process in two months.
We have a shortage of teachers in schools located in rural areas. Because of different reasons, the construction of new classrooms was held up. We will be building 8,100 classrooms for which tenders are being issued. We need 20,000 classrooms, of which some require repairs. We have filled 763 vacancies in pre-universities.
The Karnataka Education Act says no religious practice can be allowed in the school. So how come six students, who were following the rules till then, protested suddenly? We only fought for the Act
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