Karnataka government offers 'unlimited' entry at English-medium schools

The state government will offer “unlimited” admissions at its English-medium schools subject to the availability of infrastructure.

The Department of Primary and Secondary Education took the decision because no new English-medium schools are being opened in the 2022-23 academic year. The second objective is to help parents who want to send their children to English-medium schools but are unable to pay the fees because of the pandemic-induced financial constraints.

Earlier guidelines had capped admissions at government English-medium schools at 30. But this year, the department has asked officials at the local level to admit every child provided adequate infrastructure is available there.

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“Many government English-medium schools are asking for an increase in the intake. We will allow this wherever proper infrastructure is available to enrol more kids,” said an official from the department.

If there is a shortage of teachers, schools should hire guest teachers, the official added.

Based on the demand, School Development and Monitoring Committees (SDMCs) can submit requests to the Block Education Officer (BEO).

In 2019-20, Karnataka opened English-medium instruction at 1,001 government schools. The year after, it extended this to 1,400 more schools by opening English-medium sections in 276 Karnataka Public Schools and 444 Urdu-medium schools. At present, Karnataka has 2,401 government English-medium schools.

Karnataka has a total of 44,615 government schools.