Srinagar, September 9: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh has ruled that the J&K Board of School Education (BOSE) has the right to force connected schools to only use literature that it has written and released.
In a related case, the court said, “It is clear that once it is found that the Board of School Education has statutory power to prescribe text books, which includes publishing these books, it would be well within its power to require affiliated schools to use only those books that have been prescribed and published by the Board.”
The Bench of Justice Sanjay Dhar said, in response to a petition from the J&K Private Schools United Front, which says it works for the good of private educational schools and institutes, “Neither the private schools nor other publishers have any right to force the Board to prescribe text books published by these private publishers.”
The Court said, “The prescribing of text books published by the Board would not violate the rights of any publisher or owner of a private school as long as the respondent Board has the power to do so, which it does according to Section 10 of the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education Act, 1975.”
In its petition, the Forum had challenged the notification “dated 26.08.2022, which said that all private schools in J&K should make sure that in the first phase, the text books published by the BOSE are used/prescribed by all private schools in J&K for classes 6th through 8th from the next academic session.”
The Forum had challenged the notification and other communications that followed for a number of reasons, including the fact that Section 10 of the Act of 1975 gives the Board the power to tell schools what textbooks to give their students, but that section doesn’t say that the schools have to give their students the textbooks that the Board tells them to.
In its response to the motion, the Board said that it is the job of the J&K Board of School Education to decide on curriculum, assignments, and literature for grades 1 through 12.
“From reading Section 10 of the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education Act of 1975, it is clear that the respondent Board has the power to prescribe the courses of instruction, prepare curricula and detailed syllabi, and also prescribe text books for the pre-primary, elementary, secondary, and High Secondary (school graduation) and school examinations and Elementary Teachers Training Course,” the Court said.
The Court ruled that Section 2(l) of the Act of 1975 makes it clear that the Board has the power to write and print textbooks. This is because the meaning of “textbook” says that the Board can write and approve it. “Because of this, it is safe to say that the Board’s power to order textbooks would also give it the power to publish these books.”
It is true that power of the Board to prescribe courses of instructions, prepare curricula, syllabi and to prescribe text books, the Court said, has to be subject to broad educational policies and directions on the subject by the Government but the power of the Board to prescribe books which would include publication of text books, cannot be diluted or taken away.
“The only requirement is that these prescribed text books have to be in consonance with the Education Policy in operation as also in conformity with the National Curriculum Framework,” it said, adding, “the broad educational policies and the instructions of the Government from time to time on the subject guide the Board in prescription of the textbooks”.
The Court emphasised that the Board said in its statement that it has a well-established curriculum development and study wing that is staffed by trained academic staff who work there full-time. “These academicians are in charge of choosing the right textbooks so that the Board, using its power under Section 10 of the Act of 1975, can tell students to use them.” Prescription of text books by the Board, the court said, is a policy matter and it has been the consistent view of “the Supreme Court and various High Courts of the Country that in policy matters, particularly those relating to education, judicial restraint has to be adhered to.
“The Courts cannot interfere or substitute their opinion for that of the experts. In view of the analysis of the law on the subject, it is clear that the policy decisions and guidelines issued by the Board with regard to the matters relating to curriculum, syllabus and prescription of text books for the schools affiliated to the Board cannot be interfered with by the Courts, otherwise the whole exercise made by various stakeholders including educationists etc. would become futile,” the Court said.
“If the schools are at liberty to choose books, it would not only create chaos and confusion but there would not be uniformity in the education system throughout the Union Territory.”
The Court held that the Board while issuing the notification was right in observing that the practice of prescribing textbooks from different private publishers by different private schools results in non-uniformity in curriculum being taught and even instances of controversial content finding a way in some textbooks cannot be ruled out.
“Therefore, the decision of the Board in prescribing the textbooks published by it for use by the schools and students cannot be interfered with by this Court”.
