Samacheer Kalvi or Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education or Equitable education system is a School Education Department of Government of Tamil Nadu, India programme to integrate the various school educational systems within the state. There are over 1.2 crore students in four streams of school education comprising about 45,000 state board schools, 11,000 matriculation schools, 25 oriental schools and 50 Anglo-Indian schools, with different syllabus, textbooks and schemes of examinations. Uniform System of School Education was implemented by Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education Act 2010 which paves way for quality education to all children without any discrimination based on their economic, social or cultural background. The new system of education was introduced for classes I and VI in the 2010 academic year. The Karunanidhi-led DMK government had brought in Samacheer Kalvi, a uniform syllabus for students in Tamil Nadu, which was scrapped by Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK government shortly after assuming office in May.
Need for a unified system
The main need for this system to be proclaimed as the syllabus in Tamil Nadu, was that all the school students must have uniform study, diminishing the variations between the Matriculation or CBSE Students and the Government school Students. The motivation for a uniform syllabus was obtained from the Ex. Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, K. Kamaraj who was the first to initiate a uniform dress code in schools to reduce the differentiation between students from households with varying income. Tamil Nadu government also published school books in digital format.
Controversy
Government dropped the Samacheer Kalvi syllabus for the 2011-2012 academic year as the books had contents in praise of DMK's leaders. But, the High court of Tamil Nadu ordered that Samacheer Kalvi must come into immediate effect. Tamil Nadu Government moved to Supreme court and the apex court refused to stay the order of the High court and insisted that the books need to be distributed on or before 2 August 2011. On 9 August 2011, the Supreme Court of India has rejected Tamil Nadu State Government's request to drop the Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education and also directed the state government to implement the Uniform System of School Education Act within 10 days i.e., within 19 August 2011. The Supreme Court of India in its order said that any sort of objectionable material such as personal glorification, self publicity and promotion involved, could be deleted, rather than putting the operation of the Act 2010 in abeyance. The examination for SSLC for the year 2015 - 2016 will be held from March 15 to April 13. And then there is chance of changing the Samacheer to normal matric syllabus.
