Karnataka parents to have greater say in schools

Express News Service

Bangalore, May 27: Karnataka has announced the formation of a monitoring panel of parents and an insurance scheme to revamp school education.

The state issued an executive order on Friday on the proposed school development and management committees. According to the scheme, parents of a particular school’s pupils will form a general body with nine members.

An MoU was signed with the public sector company Oriental Insurance for the ‘‘safety insurance’’ of 1.1 crore school children and 300,000 teachers.
According to the scheme, parents will be compensated Rs 25,000 if a school child dies unnaturally or in an accident.

Three of the nine-member panel will be women, two SC/STs and one from a minority community. One of them would be made the committee president and the school headmaster would be the secretary-cum-treasurer.

State Primary and Secondary Education Minister H. Vishwanath said among the panel’s various functions would be monitoring the school’s work, verifying expenses and donations,

keeping tabs on teachers’ attendance and deciding on local holidays — a maximum of four so that the total working days in a year are 220 with a daily work schedule of five-and-a-half hours.

The idea is to increase community participation in school work, Vishwanath said, which can be achieved by letting the committee organise cultural functions, sports meets and educational tours.

According to Vishwanath, the committee would have to take the initiative to enroll as many children from outside theschool as possible and teach parents the importance of a school education.

The committee would undertake and supervise school repairs with technical help from panchayats, organise medical camps and ensure effective distribution of government funds.

Oriental Insurance will compensate to the extent of Rs 12,500 for partial disability and Rs 1,000 for fracture.

The state would pay two-thirds of the premium out of the Student-Teachers’ Benevolent Fund and Rotary International the rest. The premium rate is Re 1 a child.

Commissioner of Public Instruction Vijayabhaskar and Oriental manager P.R.M. Sundar signed the Memorandum Of Understanding in the presence
of the minister.

The minister said Karnataka is the first state to initiate such a scheme, which is already on at eight districts as an experiment. As of now, 40 death claims and 700 disability claims have been honoured.