As the House took up the serious issue of indiscriminate fee hike in some of the public schools, raised by BJP MlA Ganesh Joshi during the question hour on Thursday, the education minister Mantri Prasad Naithani was found fumbling when asked to name the person leading the State government-appointed committee.
Seeing his minister unable to answer the supplementary question, the Chief minister Harish Rawat came to his rescue. CM said that his government had issued notification on February 22, 2010 and the revised notification was issued on August 5, 2014 to check illegal fee hike. Besides, a committee led by chief education officer (CEO) at the district level was constituted, he added.
Thereafter, the BJP MlA Madan Kaushik pitched in, saying that under RTE, it is mandatory to enroll 25 per cent students from the unprivileged section of the locality. CM said the State government would implement the act to regulate the public schools. However, he expressed his inability to force things on the minority schools.
Joshi tore into the CM, saying that the notifications mentioned by him are not available on the government website. He sought a copy of the notifications. However, the treasury bench failed to produce the same to buttress its claim on the matter.
Joshi further said that the matter being a burning issue, the State government is yet to put into place a regulatory mechanism. Neither have they made any act to regulate the illegal practice of the public schools, he said. “Whenever the parents approached them they turn them away, asking them to give suggestions on how to regulate them,” he said.
He further said that the public schools raising their fees according to their whims every year stand in contradiction to the apex court guideline that says that they can raise the fee up to 10 percent once in three years after intimating the local administration and parents as well.
He said that over 80 percent of the schools have not formed PTAs (parent teacher association)in accordance with the laws in sync with RTI. “This despite the fact that this is mandatory for each school. We have found that most of the problems are sorted out amicably at the school level through the PTAs,” he said.
“Public schools changing syllabus quite often are forcing the hapless parents to buy books from some particular shops in contradiction of the CBSE guideline that says that only NCERT books should be prescribed in the public schools. Some privates publishers are benefiting at the expense of the parents. Despite NCERT books being much cheaper and of higher standards, the school authorities are not prescribing them to help some publishers to fleece the parents,” Joshi said.
He further said that the public schools are conducting parents’ interview, something that violates the apex court ruling.
Citing such schools flouting norms with impunity, he said they submit applications before the government at the time of opening schools. “They accept all such norms, but after getting no objection certificate (NoC), they get oblivious of their such commitments. We want the government to scrap NoCs of the errant schools,” the MlA said.
Saying that the public schools have been forcing the parents to shell out money on myriad counts like annual function, environment fee, medical checkup fee and exhibition fee, he said: “The funniest part of things is that they are charging money to celebrate the principals’ birthdays”.