Lead kindly light - dispel darkness.

Ever since the Committee for determining fees in the Private Schools in Tamil Nadu revised the fees in appeal, under Justice Raviraja Pandian and a creamy layer schools were granted a hike of upto 300% of what was initially fixed by Justice Govindarajan, the Parents have been perplexed. 
 
The sudden exit of Justice Raviraja Pandian immediately after he announced the heavy hike, the hike being contrary to his own claim before the media that he had recommended a hike of (only) up to 30% and the method in which the hike was determined without giving an opportunity for the Parents of the respective schools to be heard during the proceedings, even where specifically requested for, etc, have served to give an impression to the Parents community that all was not well with the procedure adopted by the Committee.

Since the new Government had taken office only just at that time we waited for some moves from the Government to set right the anomalies.  Now that the Government has appointed a new Judge to head the Committee and the hearings have started, it is quite legitimately hoped that the committee will be transparent in giving out the details of how and why such a hefty hike was considered necessary and wherever the parents representatives were not heard, to take steps to rectify the mistake now and give a reasoned and reasonable decision.

Now that the local body polls are over, it is also expected that the Government would start streamlining school education with the interest of children in mind. 

Already the Government has announced a trimester system and that would reduce the book load of children.  However, it is for educationists to comment upon as to whether shortening the necessity to remember the subject even for one full year will do good or harm to the development of the children.  There is no dispute however regarding the reduction of the burden of books by making them into ‘All in One’ for each term.

The other issue is regarding the supply of books by the schools and collection of exorbitant fees against the same stating that it would not fall under the purview of the fees determination committee. 

Since the text books are issued by the Government itself, Private Schools should be prohibited from compelling Parents/students to buy books from the schools itself.  The demand of the private schools that they should be allowed to make their own purchase of text books should not be allowed since it becomes a means of fleecing of parents by them. It is noticed that the books and notebooks distributed by the schools (brought by them from open market) do not have a pre-printed MRP on them. They do not appear to come under the purview of sales tax purposes also. 

In spite of the fact that the Government has reduced the price on text books by supply of a set of text books within Rs. 300, strangely some schools have increased the book fees heavily compared to what they collected last year.  Hence, apart from reducing the load of books on students, the Government has to look into the load of the price of books on parents also.

The present Uniform Syllabus for Education is seen to have combined the syllabus of 12 years in the Matric Schools and spread them out for 10 years.  The reason appears to be that the Government schools do not have KG classes. This disparity could be settled only by either starting KG classes in Government schools or by abolishing them in Private schools.

The Government’s objective of making education available to all and as per the provisions of the Constitution (The Right to free and compulsory education) could be achieved only by making mobility between the private and public schools more feasible.  Towards that the following measures would be essential:

·        The hygiene and infrastructure in Government schools should be  brought on par with that of the Private schools, in respect of security, compound walls, toilet and drinking water facilities, lab and library facilities etc and with enough number of teaching and non-teaching staff.

·        The different streams of state board having been merged in respect of syllabus, the names also has to be made common for all schools, so that disparity in the minds of children would cease to exist.

·               In order to dispel any feeling of disparity among students of Private schools and Government schools, all facilities and schemes for school children should be made applicable uniformly for both private and Government school children.

In the interest of children, until complete integration takes place between private and public schools, the Government has to ensure the following steps:

Ø      As a measure of ensuring a proper campus atmosphere and to maintain cordiality and transparency in running of the affairs of the private schools, necessary amendments have to be brought into the Private Schools Recognition Act making it mandatory for every school to have a democratically elected Parent-Teachers’ Association [PTA] to get the school’s recognition renewed.

Ø      In order to settle any dispute/complaint by or on behalf of any student, a committee at District level headed by the District Collector and comprising of Officials of the Educational department and with representatives of Managements, Teachers and Parents should be constituted.

Only by bringing in light can darkness be dispelled. 

Therefore Lead Kindly Light.