Despite ‘Right to Education’ bestowed by the Constitution, hundreds of children living in the vicinity of private schools each day either do not attend any or cross their lavish gates to go to Government schools. Nonetheless, the problems seem to be more than just a case violation of the Act by private schools. As the Constitution provides a guarantee of education to children hailing from below-poverty-line (BPl) category, most of the beneficiaries are in dark about the benevolent gesture of the Governemnt thus one of the causes for walking, sometimes beyond a mile, away from the house and school which is supposed to honour the Act by absorbing students living near them. Slums where BPl-category population lives have too few students who go to private schools in the neighbourhood.
“I never knew that there was such a provision. We didn’t think of sending our children to private schools because we thought that we could not bear the tuition fee of those schools,” said Pinki Oraon a mother of two children and a daily wager living in Gonda. Vacant quota of seats rarely bother private school as most of them take advantage of the dearth of awareness among the BPl-category burdened with day-to-day struggle of livelihood and take no pain in venturing out on their own to find out children of the category in need of education.
“Nobody has come to look for students in our basti (colony). No camp, no campaign, absolutely no effort to admit students in the school,” said Monit Oraon, a seven-year-old boy living just a stone throw away from a private school at Jhirga Toli. Obfuscation of facts on the part of schools, absence of documents to claim admission against quota and no guidance on do’s and don’ts forces needy children to take refuge in Government schools for educational needs. Surprisingly, inhabitants of certain slums are not only devoid of dignified living but have been denied basic document such as BPl-card which acts as a proof among other types of document for obtaining admission form.
“No, we don’t have anything to claim our BPl status. But that apart when we went to a prestigious school, we were shooed away by saying that there are no more forms for the category. And the school where my children are studying demands high tuition fee. I have managed so far for two children but Government school seems to be only choice for my third child,” said Sarita Devi, a vegetable seller living in a slum near SAIl Satellite Colony.
Ground realties in the immediate vicinity of a private school are even more startling. Although private schools take admission of children belonging to the BPl-category, education rarely comes for free and parents are made to cough up tuition fee that should be waved as per the provisions of the Act. Worse, the background doesn’t allow immunity against readmission and miscellaneous fee that is an annual burden on privileged and underprivileged alike.
Meanwhile, schools have expressed their concern about Government’s failure to reimburse tuition fee as per the provisions of the Act and also voiced their concern about the downside of taking admission of children hailing from a poor education background. “We are taking admissions and we have given all the details to the district administration. But our concern is that tuition fee has not been reimbursed by the Government. As we are unaided schools so to a large extent we depend on tuition fee for continuing our operation,” said Principal of Oxford Public School AK Singh.
Notably, the district administration has directed schools to comply with the RTE norms for BPl quota and take admissions of children of the category by April 25. But so far very few schools have pasted a notification on their building to guide BPl category students about admission.