Thursday, March 30, 2006

CBSE and the single girl child


Last year, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) imposed a serious burden on all its schools (even private ones which receive no aid from the government) by asking them to provide free education to the single girl children (girls with no siblings). Not surprisingly, this order was challenged in court.

Satya has all the details on the CBSE's order as well as the lawsuit. Essentially, CBSE has changed its stance. While the government-run Kendriya Vidyalaya schools will provide free education to single girl children from their class VI onwards, the private schools have the option of doing so in classes IX to XII.

More importantly,

It [CBSE] has also introduced a new scholarship scheme for single girl children who secure 60% or more marks in their class X Examination for the year 2006 onwards. These children would be given scholarship of Rs. 500/- p.m. for studying in classes XI and XII in schools who charged tuition fee of not more than Rs. 1,000/- p.m. during the academic year 2005-06.

I agree that this order is far better than the one issued earlier. However, it still leaves me with these questions: Why only single girl children? Why not all girls? Why discriminate against girls who have siblings? After all, it's not their fault that they have siblings ...

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