NEW DELHI: The Jayalalithaa government in Tamil Nadu today defended in the Supreme Court its decision to defer implementation of the Uniform System of School Education (Amendment) Act, 2011, on the ground that it suffered from serious deficiencies.Appearing before a three-judge bench, senior counsel P P Rao said the curriculum introduced by the previous DMK government "lacked quality, standard and did not conform to the parameters fixed by NCERT."He told the bench of justices J M Panchal, Deepak Verma and B S Chauhan that amendment to defer implementation of the Act was done as even the National Council for Education, Research and Training (NCERT) had sent a report that the syllabus prescribed under the Act did not conform to the National Curriculum Framework fixed by the august body.The counsel said former VC of the Bhartidasan University Prof Muthukarupan, on whose recommendations the Act was formulated, had complained the syllabus lacked quality and did not fulfil the suggestion and guidelines prescribed by him.The arguments would end tomorrow.The Jayalalithaa government had moved the apex court challenging the Madras High Court's order which had struck down an amendment to the Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education (Amendment) Act, 2011.The state had challenged the high court's order on the ground that it was "illegal and erroneous."The high court had also directed the state government to distribute the textbooks printed under the Uniform System of Education to enable teachers commence classes and to complete the exercise by July 22.Tamil Nadu has over 1.2 crore students in four streams of school education -- 45,000 state board schools, 11,000 matriculation schools, 25 oriental schools and 50 Anglo--Indian schools, all with separate syllabus, textbooks and schemes of examinations.'Samacheer Kalvi' scheme, aimed at bringing about uniform education, was shelved by Jayalalithaa in one of her first acts since returning to power of reversing several pet schemes of the previous DMK government.The apex court had on July 28 extended till August 5 the deadline for Jayalalithaa government to distribute the 9 crore textbooks to students under the Act.
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