Unfazed by an unequivocal September 1, 2010 judgement of the Bombay high court striking down a government notification appointing a statewide regulatory committee to determine the tuition fees of Maharashtra’s 8,640 private unaided or financially independent K-12 schools, the state government has tabled the Maharashtra Educational Institutions (Regulation of Collection of Fees) Bill, 2011. Unanimously passed by the legislative assembly on August 3, the Bill is pending approval of the legislative council.
Covering pre-primary, primary, secondary and higher secondary education, as well as junior colleges and depart-ment of education-funded colleges in the state “whether managed by govern-ment, local authority or a private management, including educational institutions established and adminis-tered by any minority,” the stated objective of the Bill is to “prevent commercialisation of education and profiteering by educational institutions establishment (sic) and administration of institutions set up to commercialise education”.
The Bill proposes the appointment of a Divisional Fee Regulatory Committee “as the first appellate authority to determine the fee leviable” by all private schools in Maharashtra. But in a departure from past practice, the Bill encourages negotiation between school managements and their PTAs (parent-teacher associations) as the first step to periodically determine tuition fees. Only if the difference in fees proposed by school managements and PTA executive committees is more than 15 percent, the Divisional Fee Regulatory (DFR) Committee comes into the picture to adjudicate and determine the appropriate fees after taking into account such variables as location, cost of land,frastructure and facilities provided to students. Once determined by the DFR committee, the tuition fee structure will hold good for three years.
“We are waiting for the Bill to become law before determining our response. Yet the refreshing feature of the Bill is that it encourages school managements and PTAs to mutually agree upon reasonable increases in tuition fees. Therefore the onus is upon the parent communities of schools to match the facilities they want with tuition fees and inflation,” says Rohan Bhat, managing trustee of the Children’s Academy Group of schools, Mumbai and a member of the Private Unaided Schools Forum.
In the circumstances, the appointment of the DFR Committee as the first appellate authority headed by a retired district court judge approved by the Bombay high court, is an acceptable alternative, says Bhat. “Presenting our case for fees adjudication to an expert DFR Committee may be a better altern-ative to endless arguments with PTAs,” he says.
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But Vandana Lulla, director of the seven Podar International schools in Mumbai doubts whether the DFR Committee headed by superannuated district court judges and packed with government nominees and officials will have the expertise to appreciate the value of excellent infrastructure, teacher training inputs, and affiliation expenses which private unaided schools incur in the quest for institutional excellence. “The appointment of this committee is the first step towards leveling down standards of globally benchmarked private schools,” she warns.
Likewise Gurbux Singh, the Ludhiana-based founder-principal of the English-medium Jim Corbett School, Kathgodam (Uttarakhand) for 24 years, is disturbed by the Maharashtra government’s interference with independent education institutions. “The Bill is purportedly about promoting excellence in educ-ation. But the state government’s first priority should be to improve its own school system wrecked by pervasive corruption and pathetic learning outcomes, before attempting to regulate private schools. My advice to PTAs also is to resist temptation to insist on unrealistically low tuition fees. Doing so gives a handle to the government to interfere in the running of private schools,” says Singh.
Clearly the ball is in the court of PTAs of private independent schools. It’s up to them to negotiate realistic tuition fees with school managements. If they negotiate responsibly, the issue of fee increases need not travel beyond school gates. If they are imprudent, they will let in the Trojan horse of government intervention.
Rahul Singh (Mumbai)
Muster roll inflation
One of the country’s worst-kept secrets is that post-independence India’s education system, encompassing the primary, secondary and higher learning sectors, has become the happy hunting ground of all types of racketeers and freeb-ooters with politicians and bureaucrats in the vanguard. Consequently, num-erous and multiplying rackets including construction and supplies kickbacks, teacher appointment and transfer bribes, textbooks printing and publis-hing scams, and chronic teacher truancy are rife, particularly in government education institutions managed from distant state capitals.
In the circumstances, given that learning outcomes in primary-secondary schools are deplorable, it’s hardly surprising there’s a flight from the country’s 1.25 million government schools and pupil truancy is on the rise. A three-day audit of schools and junior colleges conducted between October 3-5 by the Pune District Collectorate reveals that in urban areas, student absenteeism is worse than in rural parts. Of the 1.61 million students enroled on August 1, 2011 only 1.49 million were present on the days of the audit in 6,615 schools, colleges and other educational institutions of Pune district.
Overall in the Pune Municipal Corporation and Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation jurisdiction, 15 percent of students enroled were missing, raising suspicion in the local media that enrolments have been inflated by the addition of fictitious names in school muster rolls. Pune’s district collector, Vikas Deshmukh, refused to comment on the matter. “We have submitted the report to the state government after collating data and are awaiting further orders. Any statement relating to analysis of the data will be made by the state government and we can comment only after that,” he says.
Suspicion of inflated muster rolls has been aroused in this industrial hub after it was revealed in September that in the neighbouring Nanded district, several schools had inflated their muster rolls prompting the three-day (October 3-5) audit of Pune schools and junior colleges. With corruption scams break-ing out all over Maharashtra, the collectorate mounted a serious investig-ation into reports of muster rolls inflation deploying a total of 3,257 government employees to conduct the audit drive.
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According to Pune divisional commis-sioner Dilip Band, two to three schools in each district were found to have either inflated student numbers or planted students ‘on hire’ for the inspection. “One common abnormality was that instead of constituting classes of 40 students, a large number of classes had only 25 students. This enabled these schools to requisition a larger number of teachers and salary grants,” Band informed your correspondent.
Seemingly innocuous, the practice of muster rolls inflation by inclusion of fictitious students has serious statistical and financial consequences. “For one, it enables the state government to claim high primary school enrolment percentages and win brownie points. Secondly and more seriously, it enables corrupt school principals and local education officials to receive greater aid flows — for textbooks, uniforms, mid-day meals etc — than warranted, with the school management and local officials sharing the booty. It’s unalloyed corruption,” says a state government official who requested anonymity.Comments Vijay Sardeshpande, a well-known student counselor and director of Shrushti-Sahay Coaching Classes: “Corporation schools are a mere mandatory exercise of the state government. Since children in these schools are from the city’s slums, no one is bothered about what happens to either the students or schools. The Pune collectorate’s report indicating massive absenteeism will generate brief indignation and will soon be forgotten. That is primarily because the middle class, which enrolls its children in private English-medium schools, is least bothered about how its tax money is being wasted.”
Meanwhile until the dormant public conscience is aroused, rackets and truancy will continue to flourish in Maharashtra’s benighted government schools.
Huned Contractor (Pune)