Jaya panel sparks a row over uniform school norms

Jayalalitha on Friday announced the members of the panel, as per the June 14 directive of the Supreme Court. The panel will submit its review report to the Madras High Court by July 6. The court will then decide the main petition, a PIL seeking SKT’s implementation from this year itself.

The new AIADMK government had deferred SKT’s implementation and had passed an amendment to the “Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education Act, 2010,” for the purpose in the first session of the Assembly.

The Jayalalitha government wanted a thorough review of the common syllabi under the new system to ensure quality and to make sure that it was sans any “political propaganda material” of the previous DMK regime. Interestingly, a poem of former chief minister M Karunanidhi was included in a Tamil text.

The SKT envisages one Common School Board, merging the earlier four boards in vogue in the state, namely the State Board, Oriental, Matriculation and Anglo-Indian School Boards. The previous DMK regime had enacted a law to merge these Boards and drawn a common curriculum in the interests of ‘equity’ for school children from all strata of society.

The AIADMK government’s decision was, however, challenged in the High Court which stayed the former’s move to postpone the SKT’s implementation. The state immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, which directed the constitution of an experts panel to examine the syllabi, even while reverting back the main petition to the High Court.