TN will not allow ideological penetration by NGOs, says Education Minister
CHENNAI: Minister for School Education Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi, on Thursday, said that the State government will not allow ideological penetration through NGOs.
“I personally inspected a couple of schools to check their NGO activities and found that they only sponsored laboratories in the schools. No such ideological penetration will be allowed in schools,” said Poyyamozhi, while replying to the queries of VCK MLA J Mohamed Shanavas also called ‘Aloor’ Shanavas.
The issue of NGOs being permitted to teach school students was brought up by Shanavas when he said that the New Education Policy permits NGOs to teach in government schools and even the previous government permitted an NGO ‘Agastya’ to teach students. Shanavas hinted that the NGO continues to teach even now and might be infusing RSS ideology in the schools.
He added that in many courses, there are chapters against the ideology of social justice for which the Minister replied that such a chapter was removed from the syllabus of Tamil Nadu Open University.
Shanavas added that though the government announced formulation of a State Education Policy, it should ensure that the experts appointed to frame the policy should have thoughts of social justice or else the very purpose of the policy will be defeated.
The Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) of Tamil Nadu is 51.4% but the country’s GER is only 27.1%. With just 27.1 pc GER, the Central government is imposing NEP on Tamil Nadu, on the contrary it should be Tamil Nadu’s education policy that should be implemented across the country, added Shanavas.