CHENNAI: Amidst appeals from various quarters asking that the Uniform School Education system (USE) be implemented from the current academic year, the State Assembly on Tuesday adopted a Bill to defer it on grounds that the syllabus and textbooks prescribed under the system were not preparing students to meet challenges of globalisation.While Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa told the Assembly that introducing a perfect USE was her government’s objective, School Education minister C Ve Shanmugam reiterated that the government had no intention of scrapping the USE so there was no politics in the move. The CM clarified that the USE which was introduced in Classes 1 and 6 from the last academic year would also revert to the old syllabus in the current academic year.Shanmugam said that though the S Muthukumaran Committee had made 109 recommendations to the DMK regime, only four were accepted by it. Further, most of the members on the committees appointed by the previous regime were not educationists.Members of the DMK and Congress staged a walk-out opposing the move while the PMK, their ally, stayed in the House after registering their protest. DMK Legislative Party leader MK Stalin told mediapersons outside the House that the AIADMK government was set on thwarting all the welfare measures initiated by the DMK regime.Former School Education minister Thangam Thennarasu said the USE was introduced after taking into account the views of many educational experts and that the AIADMK government was trying to scrap it purely out of political animosity.Though the CPI and CPM supported the State government’s move, they urged the government to set a deadline for the expert committee (to be formed) to submit its report and introduce the USE at the earliest. The DMDK, Puthiya Thamizhagam and RPI welcomed the government’s move.PMK floor leader J Gurunathan said though his party had found fault with the USE, as introduced by the DMK regime, the shortcomings in the system should be set right while implementing it.DMDK leader Panruti S Ramachandran said equal opportunity to students of all sections would be ensured only when all aspects of education were taken care of and introducing just a common syllabus would not suffice.PT leader K Krishnasamy and CK Thamizharasan (RPI) said any new measure implemented by the government should help those at the grassroots level to move up and not vice versa.
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