No more uniform for PU students

Students of pre-university colleges can rejoice as the Department of Pre-University Education has issued a direction to all colleges that students cannot be asked to wear uniforms. This applies to government, aided and private colleges, and will be enforced from the 2017-18 academic year. In the admission guidelines stipulated by the department, colleges have been told that action would be initiated if they insisted on students wearing uniforms. While government and aided college students did not have uniform, some private colleges had insisted on it.

Green school uniforms

Meanwhile, around 5.13 lakh girls studying in government high schools across the State will get to wear their new uniforms: olive green salwars, from the 2017-18 academic year. There will be no change in the uniform for boys, which is sky blue shirts and navy blue trousers. The proposal to switch to salwars was initially floated in November 2015 and had received much criticism as it had stated that the new dress code may be introduced as there were increasing number of sexual violence cases in schools. The decision was taken after a meeting with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in October last year. The Department of Public Instruction also conducted a survey among high school girl students and found that 84% students wanted to wear salwar, 12% wanted the skirt and shirt combination to be retained, while the remaining said they would like to wear skirts, shirts and leggings. A three-member committee comprising senior women officials in the department selected the design, colour and pattern of the uniform.

Enrolment drive

The Department of Primary and Secondary Education will launch a drive to ensure that students aged between 6 and 14 are enrolled in schools and to keep a check on dropouts. Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait said that the department would establish 176 consolidated schools from classes 1 to 12 at the gram panchayat headquarters. These schools will have facilities such as computer and digial labs, toilets, and so on. He also said that they were entering into a memorandum of understanding with the Kendriya Vidalayas to provide training to teachers in the Adarsha Vidyalayas. The department plans to reach out to gram panchayat members and ensure that there is a meeting at the panchayat level to make sure that there were no students out of school.