There’s a rising wave of parental and students’ protest against persistent delays in the commencement of the academic year in Maharashtra’s 5,000 junior colleges, which admit an estimated 1.2 million Plus Two (class XI and XII) students annually. This year the academic year was scheduled to start on July 10, but the date has been postponed to August 28. Last year (2009), the academic year commenced on August 9. In short during the past two years teachers and students have lost over a month of the new academic year.
Informed public opinion is unanimous that unwarranted interference by the state government — in particular its persistent efforts to tilt junior college admissions in favour of class X school-leaving students writing the state government’s SSC (Secondary School Certificate) exam — is to blame. An estimated 1.6 million students write the SSC exam every year, against 18,000 who write the class X exams of the Union government’s Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the private sector Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) in Maharashtra. But because the academic and curricular standards of the pan-India examination boards are higher, students writing the exams of these boards tend to bag a disproportionately higher number of junior college admissions. For parochial pride and vote-catching reasons, since 2007 the state government has been attempting to tilt junior college admissions in favour of SSC students.
In 2008, the state government introduced its percentile formula under which junior colleges were directed to divide a student’s aggregate by the average of the top 10 students from that particular board, multiply it by 100 and use the resulting percentile for admission. This directive was struck down by the Bombay high court on September 26, 2008 as discriminatory. Undaunted in 2009 the state govern-ment introduced the 90:10 system under which 90 percent of the seats in junior colleges were to be reserved for SSC students. Once again the high court struck the proposal down as discri-minatory on July 6 last year.
Nothing loath, in April this year, to the same end, based on the report of a committee chaired by the state’s education minister Balasaheb Thorat, the state government issued its ‘best of five’ directive under which junior college managements were obliged to assess the admission applications of SSC students on the basis of the average scores of their best five of six answer papers, while school leavers from CISCE and CBSE boards would continue to be ranked on the basis of their overall averages.
Once again this directive was challenged in the Bombay high court by the parent of a CISCE affiliated school, which struck it down on June 23. Ill-advisedly the state government appealed the high court’s verdict in the Supreme Court. On July 13 the apex court passed an interim judgement on the best of five policy, directing the state government to implement it for SSC students but ordered it to extend the assessment formula to CISCE and CBSE school-leaving students as well.
This annual display of populist petty parochialism is taking a toll on students who need to average high percentages to enter the country’s much-too-few undergrad colleges. “Our first semester will last only for 15-20 days, which won’t be enough for completing the syllabus on time,” says Mithun Siria, an SSC school leaver who has been admitted into the M.N. College of Commerce and Economics. Therefore, Siria has signed up with a coaching school. “My coaching classes started a month before junior college begins. This way my studies won’t be hampered because of the delayed academic session,” he says.
While Maharashtra’s deputy director of education, S.C. Chauhan, says that the academic session of 2010-11 will be completed as per schedule, educati-onists tend to differ. Comments Fr. Frazer Mascarenhas, principal of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai: “Junior college classes should already have begun by now. We are over a month late in starting and have to cover the entire syllabus. With these constant delays we can’t go deep into our syllabuses.”
Adds Marie Fernandes, principal of St. Andrew’s College which is now processing junior college applications to admit an estimated 450 students into class XI this year: “The quality of education is suffering because of all this drama. Last year, admissions were delayed and the state government dropped the first unit test for first year junior college students. This is hurting the chances of our students doing well in the class XII exams next year.”
Meanwhile educationists in Mumbai stress that the Supreme Court’s verdict of July 13 levelling the junior college admissions playing field is an interim order. In October, it will pronounce its final order in which severe strictures are likely to be passed against the Maharashtra government.
Swati Roy (Mumbai)
Intervention invitation
Unable and/or unwilling to raise academic standards in its own 5,460 government and aided secondary schools, the Maharashtra state government has targeted private — particularly ‘elite’ secondaries affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education and the Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations — for uniquely Indian-style bureaucratic harassment. For the past three years it has unsuccessfully attempted to tilt the system for admission into junior colleges in favour of government and aided schools affiliated with the state government’s SSC (Secondary School Certificate) board (see previous report).
Now its latest directive — a government resolution (GR) — issued on July 15 making it compulsory for all 8,640 private unaided schools in Maharashtra (pop.100 million) to display their annual accounts and balance sheets online, has once again ruffled the feathers of their promoters and managements.
The history behind the Maharashtra government’s latest GR (for which the state’s parents’ community is also to blame) can be traced back to April 2009 when a petition was filed by some parents protesting a tuition fee increase by the management of Balbharti Public School, Kharghar, a Mumbai suburb. The petition went to the Supreme Court which ordered the state government to constitute a panel to regulate tuition fee increases. In June last year, a 21-member committee headed by retired IAS officer, Kumud Bansal, was formed to frame broad principles according to which private unaided schools should determine their tuition fees. In its report submitted to the government in October last year, the Bansal Committee recommended that private unaided school managements should be free to make “reasonable” increases in tuition fees after discussion with their PTAs (Parent-Teacher Associations), but prohibited them from collecting capitation fees.
The Bansal committee’s report was severely criticised by the Mumbai-based Forum for Fairness in Education and the All-India Federation of PTAs for being “management friendly” and rejected its suggestions. Following this the Bombay high court in an order dated February 10 directed the government to frame a tuition fees policy after consulting with experts, academics and parents.
The GR of July 15 is the outcome of these developments. Under the GR, schools are permitted to raise tuition fees every three years after discussion with their PTAs. In a bid to promote transparency, the GR also directs private unaided schools to publish details of their finances, fee structure, and admission procedure on their websites.
Unsurprisingly, the managements of private unaided or independent schools have not taken kindly to this invasion of their privacy and directive to display finances online for public scrutiny. Hanif Kanjer, director of the Rustomjee International School, believes this is “a futile and wasteful exercise”, since all private unaided schools submit their accounts to the state government’s education ministry every year.
On a broader point of principle, independent school managements question the rationale of micro-management by government, since they are financially self-supporting. Kunal Dalal, managing director of JBCN Education Pvt. Ltd which manages the Children’s Nook Group of schools in Mumbai, advises institutional manage-ments to raise tuition fees modestly every year rather than sharply every few years. “Rising tuition fees are inevitable in an inflationary economy and one in which parents insist on excellent faculty and facilities for their children. Unfortunately there are some schools that raise their fees by 50-100 percent suddenly and without notice. This prompts government intervention. School managements should determine tuition fees bilaterally with parents as both want to give children the best education,” says Dalal.
Yet it’s incontrovertible that short-sighted parents have invited government interference in the management of independent schools. “Aggrieved parents of independent schools should form parents’ associations or PTAs and address their grievances directly to institutional manage-ments. Asking the government to intervene is to invite a Trojan horse into their school. Incremental government interference and dilution of academic standards becomes inevitable. The Bansal Committee has providentially safeguarded the autonomy of unaided schools. Managements and parents of independent schools should accept its verdict. The alternative is a Pandora’s box,” warns a former principal of a high- profile city school turned education consultant.
That’s good advice. But likely to fall on deaf ears.
Anupama Patil (Mumbai)
Judgement lapse
Pune (pop.5 million) — Maharashtra’s second-ranked industrial city and a hub of higher education which attracts students from 14 foreign countries — was rocked in early July by news reports in the local press highlighting the arrest of Ajit Kumar Oberoi and his wife, Inderjot Kaur, promoter-directors of the high-profile Pune-based Dina Institute (formerly Dina Institute of Hotel and Business Management). This enter-prising duo, who promoted the institute after working with the Oberoi Group of hotels for several decades, was arrested on July 7 by the Chatushrungi police for allegedly cheating 44 students by falsely describing a postgraduate diploma course in business manage-ment (PGDBM) and collecting excess fees.
Comments Tara Chand Ananda, one of the students admitted into Dina Institute’s 2007-09 PGDBM programme: “Together with 43 other students I was misled by the institute’s claim that it offered a full-time management degree study programme affiliated to the University of Pune (UoP), whereas it was actually a part-time diploma programme.”
The Chatushrungi police registered the students’ complaints in June and July 2009 for offences under ss. 420 (cheating) and 34 (common motive) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 against the Oberoi duo and six other employees of Dina Institute (DI).
The aggrieved students contend that there is a big difference between full-time and part-time courses in business management, with the latter being restricted to evening classes of 90-120 minutes duration as they are designed for working executives. According to the complaint, DI collected a tuition fee of Rs.2.30 lakh per student, way above the fee prescribed for PGDBM courses by the University of Pune. It is also alleged that the fee collected was not approved by the Maharashtra state government’s Shikshan Shulka Samiti, which regulates fees in private unaided professional education institutions.
The initial bail plea, submitted by the Oberoi couple’s counsel S. K. Jain, was rejected. However, they were granted bail on July 13 by the Pune district sessions court on condition that the duo paid Rs.18.5 lakh as solvent security in the judicial magistrate’s court.
Speaking to reporters outside the court premises, Ajit Kumar Oberoi protested the duo’s innocence and attributed the dispute to a technicality related to the licence granted to DI by UoP. “We have provided the PGDBM students full access to the institute’s infrastructure and facilities. The entire issue is the result of some misunderstanding between the students, university and Dina Institute. UoP’s letter of affiliation to us did not specify the PGDBM course as part-time nor does its booklet categorise it as a part-time course as it has done with the courses offered by other affiliated institutes. If our PGDBM had been approved as a part-time programme, it would have been bracketed with the others. Therefore, we went ahead and offered it as a full-time study programme,” explains Oberoi.
However, the 44 students who filed the cheating charge against the Oberoi couple are not satisfied with this explanation. “We were asked to pay a tuition fee of Rs.2.30 lakh per year whereas according to a Pune University letter dated March 12, 2009 addressed to the state police, we should have been charged only Rs.50,000. Therefore, it’s quite clear we were asked to pay full-time course fees for part-time classes,” says Ananda.
Neither does C.M. Chitale, dean (management faculty) of UoP, buy the Oberois’ defence statement. “The PGDBM course offered by Dina was granted approval by the state department of higher and technical education through a government resolution issued on July 5, 2007, based on the recommendation of UoP. The GR clearly mentions that the PGDBM course sanctioned to Dina Institute is a part-time programme,” says Chitale.
That’s bad news for the Oberois who to their credit have nurtured DI into a well-respected hotel and business management education institute, but have let slip the advantage by a bad error of judgement.
Huned Contractor (Pune)