Jnana Prabodhini seeks special status; stumped education dept wonders- What is ‘special’?

“Special schools are given exemption from the rules of RTE, such as 25 per cent reservation provision, and the rule which does not allow a child to fail till he or she reaches Class VIII. Most importantly, it also gives exemption from the rule against taking any kind of entrance exam while admitting students.

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Jnana Prabodhini has asked for our permission for it to be classified as a special school,” said N K Jarag, director, MSCERT. The Right to Education Act 2009 gives exception to special schools such as Military Schools and Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya.

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“Currently, we do not have any specific definition of what will comprise a special school. Hence we have written to SCERTs in other states in the country to know if they have defined the meaning of special schools. In case they have, we will take it as a guidance to frame our own rules. A proposal will be sent to the government and then it will decide on how to make a framework to define special schools,” added Jarag.

Milind Naik, principal, Jnana Prabodhini School, however, was of the opinion that as the school caters to gifted children and is an experimental model of school, it must be given special status.

“I think we are an experimental school. We base our model on creativity and one cannot have blanket rules in creativity. We are not the only ones but there are schools in Chennai, Pondicherry, Ramakrishna Mission schools etc who are facing problems because they are trying to have a creative model of education and government is trying to put us all in under a blanket rule.

Ours is a school for gifted children and hence we need to take exams to see the potential in a child to nurture it further. There are such schools in all parts of the world. Hence we want a special status so that creativity in education is not snuffed out,” said Naik.

“For this year, the Supreme Court has given us an extension of one year and we are allowed to go forward with the type of entrance exams that we take before admissions. But government cannot have guidelines to check whether a school is special or not. They will have to make a committee which goes and checks such proposals because all such schools will have different aspects and putting a blanket rule will not be helpful. Hence a school-specific rule is needed,” added Naik.

However, education activists are not happy with the move. An activist, who did not wish to be named, said, “RTE rules should be applied to all. Once special status is introduced, all schools will vie for it to get exemption from RTE. Exemption have been given to madrassas and Vedic schools as constitution provides them that right. But in the spirit of the Act, I do not think exempting others from RTE is right.”