A Supreme Court appointed expert panel will decide in three weeks whether Tamil Nadu’s uniform school education syllabus should include former chief minister M Karunanidhi’s eulogy or poems penned by his daughter Kanimozhi.

However, there would be no reverting back to the old streams of education and the new uniform syllabus implemented for class I and class VI from the last academic session will continue, a vacation bench of Justices B S Chauhan and Swatanter Kumar ordered on Tuesday taking a politically neutral decision.

The panel will vet the syllabus for classes II to IV and VII to X under the Uniform School Education System (USES), introduced by the DMK regime to do away with four different streams. The panel would be presided over by the TN chief secretary and comprise two representatives of the state government, two from NCERT, two independent experts in school education and the director of school education.

After the defeat of DMK in the assembly polls, the Jayalalithaa government had decided to postpone implementation of the USES for all classes on the ground that the new syllabus was never evaluated by a expert panel as was promised by the earlier regime. But the Madras High Court had stayed the decision.

The Supreme Court asked the expert panel to submit its report within three weeks and requested the HC to take a final decision on the issue in the next two weeks.

Though it solved a possible confusing scenario – which textbooks to study — for over one crore students in Tamil Nadu, it expressed its strong resentment over the political decision taken, especially after a regime change, without taking into acount the fallout on the public.

But, both sides — the Jayalalithaa government and the petitioners before the HC — went happy from the apex court, for it allowed the new system to continue for classes I and VI and appointed an expert panel for examining the syllabus for other classes.

Till the HC takes a final view on the pending petitions against the Jayalalithaa government’s May 26 decision, the new system will not be implemented for other classes, the bench clarified.

In its special leave petition, the TN government had appealed against a June 10 order of Madras HC, which stayed the AIADMK government’s decision to postpone implementation of the Uniform School Education Scheme from this academic year.

Immediately after getting a massive mandate in the assembly polls, the Jayalalithaa government had amended the Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education Act to postpone the new syllabus on the ground that it needed to be vetted by educationists.

What had miffed the AIADMK government was the alleged misuse of power by the earlier regime to fill textbooks for children from class I to VI with eulogies of Karunanidhi. It stated in its appeal before the apex court that the amendment had aimed to rid the syllabus of politics.

Source : Times of India