Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) By several metrics, the southern state of Karnataka (pop.70 million) is India’s most educationally advanced. Bengaluru, the state’s admin capital, is widely regarded as the Silicon Valley of India for hosting a large number of new genre ICT (information communication technology) companies and huge back offices of IT multinationals including Google, Microsoft, Intel and Accenture. The garden city also hosts several top-ranked science and technology higher ed institutions including the Indian Institute of Science, National Institute of Advanced Studies, IIM-Bangalore, National Law School of India University with Karnataka hosting 290 engineering colleges. Unsurprisingly, the state contributes 20 percent of India’s annual exports of ICT services valued at $58 billion. However, the quality of school-leavers entering the state’s vaunted higher education institutions (HEIs) is set to diminish because of continuous chaos and confusion in public K-12 education. In particular, under supervision of the one-year-old Congress government and education minister Madhu Bangarappa, K-12 education in the state is experiencing unprecedented chaos and confusion. In March, the Karnataka high court issued an order barring the state government from conducting ‘board exams’ for class V, VIII and IX students of 56,157 government and private schools affiliated with the Karnataka School Examination and Assessment Board (KSEAB). Subsequently on appeal, a two-judge bench of the high court directed KSEAB to conduct the exams without delay “in the interest of students”. On April 8, the Supreme Court restrained the state government from publishing results of the board exams on the ground that conduct of exams for children in elementary classes (I-VIII) violates the landmark Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which prohibits formal exams for primary/elementary school children. Simultaneously, another row erupted over conduct of the Karnataka Common Entrance Test (KCET) 2024, which determines undergrad admissions into 290 engineering colleges statewide. The KCET test papers, written by 3.34 lakh class XII students on April 18-19, included 50 questions which were beyond the syllabus prescribed for state board pre-university college (PUC) students. Following strident protests from faculty, students and parents’ associations, the state government issued a statement (April 28) saying that the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) has been directed not to evaluate students’ answers to the 50 out-of-syllabus questions. Even as the dust was settling down on this mess, on May 8, the Congress government issued a notification scrapping implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 formulated by the Dr. K. Kasturirangan Committee after a hiatus of 34 years, and proposed formulation of its own State Education Policy under the chairmanship of Prof. Sukhadeo Thorat, former chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC). As a result, all undergrad colleges statewide which had introduced the four-year bachelor’s degree mandated by NEP 2020, reverted to the previous three-year degree programme. The outcome of swirling confusion in the state’s education sector manifested in the state’s class X SSLC (Secondary School Leaving Certificate) exam. Of the 8.59 lakh students who wrote the exam, a mere 54 percent (cf. 84 percent in 2023) passed.…
