After the Right to Education Act 2009 came into force, schools are obliged to strictly follow guidelines to improve the standard of education. No school, whether public or private, can run without obtaining ‘no objection certificate’ (NOC) from the Government.
To streamline the procedure, the State School and Mass Education (SME) department in 2010 had instructed all the District Inspectors of Schools (DIs) to issue the NOC to schools functioning in their locality if they fulfill the prescribed criteria. But after a few months, the SME department withdrew the authority of the DIs and decided to issue the NOC from the Directorate after obtaining online applications through website. More than 1,400 schools have filed online applications for the NOC through the OPEPA website in last one year and are awaiting necessary action from the SME department. This proves that the mechanism of quick redressal of grievances or disposal of applications though e-governance is yet to smoothly function in the SME dept for unknown reasons.
The department has been more keen to clear pending NOC applications of private English medium schools by holding High Power Committee (HPC) meetings for the purpose at least twice a year, but no interest is taken to hold similar HPC meeting to clear pending NOC applications for Odia medium schools in the State. Hence, thousands of applications have been kept pending since long making the future of more than a lakh of children enrolled in these schools uncertain.
“The HPC for primary schools has not met since 2011 while the HPC for the secondary schools never met in last two years,” an official of the department confessed, adding applications of more than 200 new high schools were still awaiting approval of the HPC.