“Karnataka Govt Denies Poor Children Access to Education”; Left-Wing Student Organisations Slam School Closures

Bengaluru: Left-wing student organisations on Wednesday strongly criticised the Karnataka government for ordering the closure and merger of government schools under the proposed KPS Magnet scheme, alleging that the move would severely harm public education and deny poor children easy access to schooling.

Addressing a press conference at the Press Club of Bangalore, representatives of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), All India Students’ Federation (AISF), All India Democratic Students’ Organisation (AIDSO), All India Students’ Association (AISA) and Karnataka Vidyarthi Sangha (KVS) said the scheme amounted to an attack on the public education system. They released a copy of a government order which envisages the closure of more than forty thousand government schools and their merger into around six thousand Karnataka Public Schools (KPS), with nine hundred such schools planned in the first phase.

The organisations said functioning village schools with sufficient enrolment are being closed and merged into centrally located schools, forcing children to travel long distances. This places an unfair burden on parents and makes schooling difficult for children from rural and working-class families.

Raising the slogan, “Abandon the KPS Magnet project that robs poor children of education. Save public education, save our village government schools,” the student leaders said the order mandates the merger of all schools within a one to five kilometre radius to form Magnet centres.

They pointed out that the responsibility for student transportation has been shifted to School Development and Monitoring Committees, opening the door to outsourcing and corporate funding. This was a clear step towards the privatisation of public education. “Funds meant for public welfare are being used to shut down rural schools where the children of working people study. This is a betrayal of public trust,” they said.

The student groups also highlighted the existing crisis in the education sector, noting that nearly fifty-nine thousand teacher posts remain vacant, thousands of schools lack basic infrastructure, and many institutions function with just a single teacher. Closing schools instead of addressing these long-standing issues, they said, reflects an anti-education approach.

Strong objection was also raised to the introduction of compulsory vocational training from Class six under the scheme. The student groups alleged that this would push poor children into cheap labour and deny them proper academic education. “The government is moving towards creating ‘human machines’ without basic subject knowledge or critical thinking,” they said, calling the project a “Black KPS Magnet” scheme and demanding its immediate withdrawal.

The Karnataka government had issued an order in October last year to upgrade selected government schools into Karnataka Public Schools during 2025–26 and 2026–27 with funding from the State Budget and an Asian Development Bank loan. The order provides for the merger of smaller schools into KPS centres, a changes in the curriculum and vocational courses from higher classes.

The student organisations said these measures, taken together, would dismantle the existing network of neighbourhood government schools and weaken public education, and vowed to intensify protests until the scheme is scrapped.