Playschools running in several localities of Capital City without any legal approval or affiliation is creating hurdle for government officials in keeping a check on them for violating rules on different grounds as all these kindergarten schools does not function under any set defined guidelines. Officials from district administration and education department have claimed that they have no legal rights that can help in checking out the functioning, regulation or affiliation of playschools that caters to the need of several toddlers in their early stage of academics.
Interestingly, the municipal corporation that is responsible for registering and issuing license to the stakeholders of playschools has kept no official record of playschools functioning within the municipal peripheral. “We do not keep any specific record of playschools with us. Since our responsibility is issuing the license to public for commercial purposes, our responsibility ends here. For registration, a person needs to submit Rs. 700 to Rs. 2500 accordingly for setting up playschools,” said, Deputy Mayor, Sanjiv Vijayawargia.
The Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 provides for free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 under Article 21A of the constitution. Children below the age of six are beyond the scope of RTE norms yet the act does address early childhood care in Section 11 of the Act by stating that the government may make necessary arrangement for providing pre-school education or for running playschools.
“There are no defined rules for playschools so far. The playschools functioning in city are beyond the purview of education department. Hence no officials are liable to monitor the functioning of playschools,” Ranchi DSE, Shivendra Kumar, said.
Notably, after the recent decision of Jharkhand High Court (HC) to properly monitor the functioning of play schools, no stringent initiatives has been taken up to ensure playschools functioning or about the playschools affiliation including the place where they are being opened.
“Since no regulatory legal provisions are there to monitor the functioning of playschools so the district administration does not keep any record of playschools functioning across the city. As of now, we receive no formal applications from the people who are running playschools for any specific purpose,” said, Ranchi DC, Manoj Kumar.
No government organizations can check number of children admitted at playschools, its location and infrastructure, business mode of the playschools, budgets, recruitment of teaching and administration staff
including curriculum being taught to kids at these nursery schools.