Political interference in the internal affairs of education institutions is de rigueur in Tamil Nadu (pop. 72 million) where continuous interventions by the state’s two major political parties — the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) — has wrecked school education. Reckless interference in K-12 education began during the Karunanidhi-led DMK regime (2006-2011) when, under the populist pretext of providing “equity in education”, the DMK legislated the Uniform System of School Education (USSE) Act 2010, abolishing Tamil Nadu’s four school examination boards — the state, Matriculation, Anglo-Indian and Oriental — and decreeing a common curriculum and textbooks for all 53,000 government schools and 10,934 private unaided primary-secondaries affiliated with the Tamil Nadu State Board of School Education (TNSBSE). Mercifully, schools affiliated with the pan-India CBSE (580) and CISCE (52) examination boards were exempted from following the TNSBSE syllabus/curriculum.

As a result, the samacheer kalvi or common school curriculum became mandatory for government and private schools despite TNSBSE being highly criticised by private school administrators for its poor quality textbooks and dilution of academic standards. Although the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK government, which swept the state’s legislative assembly elections a year later, was opposed to samacheer kalvi, it had to implement the USSE Act following a Supreme Court order of August 2011 upholding the Act.

To compound the misery of Tamil Nadu’s private schools, the DMK government also legislated the Tamil Nadu Schools (Regulation of Collection of Fee) Act, 2009, under which it decreed a new fees structure applicable to 5,934 private unaided Matriculation schools (unique to Tamil Nadu) and 5,000 private nursery and primary schools, appointing three successive Private School Fee Determination Committees (PSFDC) to determine the tuition fees chargeable by private schools.

The net result of the DMK government’s populist interventions with the state’s once highly respected private schools is that standards and learning outcomes have plunged, and the low tuition fees prescribed by the PSFDC have proved inadequate to provide children contemporary, tech-enabled education. “State government intervention has completely eroded our autonomy in planning curricula and selecting textbooks best suited for our students. Since TNSBSE-appointed exam assessors reward rote memorisation skills, students who pass TNSBSE’s class X and XII board exams with flying colours fare dismally in the public entrance exams for entry into the best engineering, medical and commerce colleges of the country. Moreover, low tuition fees fixed for private schools by the PSFDC has left us without any margin to recruit well-qualified teachers, introduce innovations in teaching pedagogy or provide extra-curricular education,” says R. Visalakshi, president of the Tamil Nadu Private Schools’ Association.

The heavy regulatory hand of the state government has not spared even pre-primary schools in Tamil Nadu which have been completely autonomous for over six decades. On June 12, 2015, the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK government promulgated post-independence India’s first draft code of regulations for the state’s 11,300 registered pre-primary schools, followed by a revised draft on July 20. Educationists in Chennai fear that some provisions included in the draft regulations such as two exits in all classrooms; lease agreements for a minimum five years and restricting admissions to children residing within a 1-km radius etc, are a charter for the notorious inspectors of the education ministry to extract illegal rents from non-compliant preschool promoters. Preschool managements also fear the inevitability of tuition fee regulations being slapped upon them by the state government in the near future.

Unusually, a rising number of the state’s normatively aquiescent academics are also beginning to speak up against political interference in higher education which is prompting corruption in admissions, faculty appointments and conduct of examinations. It’s hardly a secret that state ministers demand huge sums of money from aspirants for the post of vice chancellor.

“The cascading effect of corrupt practices which has penetrated every level is ruining the state’s education system,” warns Ashok Verghese, director, Hindustan University, Chennai. 

A sad commentary of a state hitherto respected for its excellent education institutions.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)