BENGALURU: The state cabinet on Wednesday gave its approval to amend the Right to Education ( RTE ) Act to ensure primacy of enrolment in government schools of Karnataka Emulating models of neighbouring states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu , the state government plans to amend the Act allowing parents to enrol children in private schools only if there are no government schools in the vicinity. The Act defines vicinity as a radius of 1km.Briefing mediapersons after the cabinet meeting, state minister for law Krishna Byregowda said: “The primary intention of RTE is to provide education to all class of students. For students from BPL families it is free of cost. Till date, Karnataka had allowed parents to admit children in private schools despite having government schools in the same neighbourhood. This has resulted in the enrolment ratio dropping drastically. We have decided to amend the RTE Act allowing parents to admit children in a private school only if there are no government schools in the vicinity.”States like Kerala and Tamil Nadu already have such a law in place and it is said to have yielded positive results in terms of the number of students enroling in government schools.The move to reduce admissions in private schools under RTE was first initiated in 2017 when then education minister Tanveer Sait had said the cost of educating children in private schools was a huge burden on the exchequer.“In the past five years (2013-2017), the Karnataka government has spent over Rs 800 crore to educate children in private schools,” Sait had said. “It means we have lost so many students to private schools, who otherwise would have studied in our schools. We want to promote government schools.”

Stay updated with all the Bangalore Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.