A merger and much more: Apprehensions abound, even as some accept merger of all categories of T.N. government schools   Premium

The recent Tamil Nadu budget announcement that stated all schools, including Adi Dravidar and Tribal schools, HR&CE Schools, those run by the Forest Department and the Department of the Differently-Abled would be merged, has evoked mixed reactions: while some say this will help in improving infrastructure and quality of education, others say identifying and improving on existing issues would have been a better solution

Of the multiple announcements that Tamil Nadu’s budget for 2023-24 made, one polarised civil society. It pertained to schools functioning under different government departments, such as the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare (ADTW), Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes and Denotified Communities Welfare (BCW), Forests, and Hindu Religious And Charitable Endowments (HR&CE), being brought brought under the School Education (SE) Department.

Such departments together account for 1,834 schools in Tamil Nadu, at which roughly 1.6 lakh students study. Of these, around 80% of schools (1,466) and 80% of students (1.26 lakh) are under the ADTW Department. Within ADTW, 1,138 are AD Welfare schools while the remaining 328 are tribal welfare schools. 

Kallar Reclamation schools, run by the BCW Department in Madurai, Theni and Dindigul districts for children from the denotified communities, which earlier faced marginalisation under the Criminal Tribes Act, have the third-highest number of schools at 295. Around 27,000 students study in them. The HR&CE Department runs 32 schools, the Welfare of Differently-Abled Persons Department, 22 and the Forest Department, 19 schools.

S.C. Nataraj, director of the Sathyamangalam-based non-governmental organisation SUDAR, which works with tribal communities, said that the merger has been sough after, for a long time now. Long-pending grievances of students, especially from the Government Tribal Residential Schools, could be addressed through the administrative expertise in the SE Department, involving Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) Coordinators, Block Resource Teachers, Block Education Officers, and District Education Officers, he said. 

S. Namburajan, working president, National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled, said that special schools have for long been left out of the general discourse surrounding school education: this could be addressed by this merger. T.M.N. Deepak of the December 3 movement, a disability rights organisation, also said that integration at some level with the SE department could help the special schools get the attention they need. 

The move to merge AD Welfare schools, Kallar Reclamation schools and HR&CE schools, on the other hand has attracted apprehensions. T.R. Ramesh of the Temple Worshippers Society, who has filed litigations related to the opening of colleges by the HR&CE Department, said that the schools were started by the respective temples in their properties. The HR&CE department did not own them. As the schools have a religious character and impart courses on Hinduism, they cannot be run by the School Education department, which is secular in nature. 

A Selvapreetha of the Tamil Nadu Denotified Tribes Social Justice Movement., a former student of the Kallar Reclamation School in Perumkamanallur, said she felt changing her school’s name would amount to erasing her community’s struggle against the Criminal Tribal Act, and the formation of these schools.