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Journalism of Courage
In an effort to channelise Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds appropriately for the development of government schools, Karnataka Deputy Chief minister D K Shivakumar has begun talks with the school education department to work out a framework to bring corporates and private institutions together to improve government schools in the state.
With regard to the matter, a meeting which lasted for over an hour was held at Samagra Shikshana Karnataka office in Bengaluru on Wednesday. The meeting is an extension of the announcement made by Shivakumar on August 4, wherein a target was set to develop 2000 corporate-financed schools in three years in PPP (public-private partnership) mode in gram panchayats.
While the move comes in the backdrop of the misuse of CSR funds, the reason to develop model schools on a PPP basis is also to curb migration from rural to urban areas for educational purposes.
School education minister Madhu Bangarappa said, “This plan is not about accepting small donations any more. Since, CSR funds were being misused for a long time now, we want corporates to take responsibility of the school fully. The state government is not going to spend on this, instead we will be presenting our requirements to the corporates. Meanwhile, private schools will have to provide human resources in terms of teaching and non-teaching staff to improve the overall quality of education.”
As per the ministry of corporate affairs, Karnataka has attracted the highest allocation of CSR funds in the education sector with a whopping Rs 3,667 crore from 2016 to 2022.
According to Shivakumar, the schools will be developed with affiliations to CBSE, ICSE and state boards and the fees are expected to be nominal. While appointing private school teachers, these schools will also have government school teachers on a supplementary basis.
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