Media Release

Bengaluru, Jul 14: The office-bearers of the Karnataka Unaided PU Colleges’ Management Association (KUPMA) organised a meeting with Social Education and Literacy minister Madhu Bangarappa on July 13. The meeting was held at Vidhana Soudha and was chaired by the speaker of Vidhana Sabha U T Khader in the presence of the principal secretary of education department and the PU board director.

The minister promptly responded to the request of the office-bearers of KUPMA and issued an instruction to renew the recognition of private Unaided Pre-University colleges for 10 years from the current academic year. He assured that only the documents in the online application will be verified in the coming days. He said that the private college management must be ready to pay the fees for this.

Further, the colleges urged that if a student drops out of the college there must be no refund of fees to the student. They requested the government to issue a circular to make this applicable to private colleges as well. They requested that at the least the government must not issue any circular making the refund of fees compulsory.

They also urged that the education department officials should consider the experiences and suggestions of the private colleges before implementing the governments’ educational policies.

They said that there should not be any kind of error in the question papers in the examination conducted by the department; they should not be out of syllabus too. The question paper of the exam should be of good quality. KUPMAA said that the government should immediately abandon the decision of three exams. Conducting three exams in this way impoverishes the quality of the exam. It was told that it would be difficult to manage time for conducting the examination and evaluation.

Only one main examination and one supplementary examination should be conducted by the Education Department. The syllabus for the examination should be published at the beginning of the academic year and there should be clarity in it. Even if it is NCERT syllabus it must be published in detail on the department’s web site and the question paper must be flawless. Another point made by KUPMA was that the department must not hastily force the colleges to upload any document in the SATS portal. Instead the colleges must be given enough time to do this.

In addition, students should not be given grace marks in the final examination for any reason. It was told that the quality of education should be maintained. Similarly, the Government should not impose any conditions on buildings (old buildings) of already functioning colleges. But government can impose rules for newly constructed buildings. However, to ensure the safety of students, the DDPUE may visit the college in the respective district and take appropriate measures regarding safety. It was informed that the department of Pre-University education should prepare the calendar of events (year plan) well in advance, that is at least two months before the beginning of the academic year.

A request was put forward that Pre-University education department while preparing the examination schedule, especially before fixing the dates of competitive examination like KCET, Annual Examination, Practical Examination etc, the department should discuss with the KUPMA members and take a decision in the interest of the students.

College management is expected to pay fees for additional sections to the Department of Pre-University Education. In that case if any excess fees are paid, arrangements should be made to refund the amount to the educational institution.

The Department of Pre-University Education shall scrutinize the application for permission for a new college or additional section in the current academic year, and grant permission in sufficient advance. Similarly, in this regard, it was urged that consideration should be given to the process of granting permission at least two months before the commencement of the academic year. For this it is better to create a calendar of events.

PU director Sindhu B Rupesh informed that the revenue department has been instructed to implement land conversion for educational purpose in all the districts soon.

Ministers and departmental officials such as principal secretary Ritesh Kumar Singh, director of school education (Pre-University) Sindhu Rupesh, joint director Shweta gave a positive response to fulfil the 15 demands made by Dr KUPMA president on this occasion. Dr M Mohan Alva, secretary, Prof Narendra L Nayak, president Dr M B Puranik, vice president Dr Sudhakar Shetty, Yuvaraj Jain, joint secretary Vishwanath Sheshachala, Mysuru, member Subrahmanya Nattoja, Bangaluru South Zone president Dr Jayaram Shetty, Bangalore North Zone secretary Devaraj B, Davanagere president S J Sridhar, Haveri president Satish Bagannavara and treasurer Ramesh K were present.