Ananthi Rajaram, a homemaker from a low-income area in Murphy Town, is on the lookout for a school to admit her three-year-old daughter Keerthana.
Ananthi Rajaram, a homemaker from a low-income area in Murphy Town, is on the lookout for a school to admit her three-year-old daughter Keerthana. Though Keerthana will be eligible under the Right to Education (RTE) Act to get free education in top schools in the surrounding area, Ananthi is wary of enrolling her in one of those schools.
“I am afraid they will do something to my daughter. They are being forced to admit her for free and they may not have wanted her under any other circumstance. What if the teachers treat her badly? They might hurt our children or isolate them. I don’t want that to happen to Keerthana,” she says firmly.
The RTE Act, to be enforced from this academic year, states that 25% of seats in all private and unaided schools (with the exception of private unaided minority institutions) should be given free of cost to children from low-income families living near the school. While the act has been received with mixed feeling among the academia, there are detractors even among the low-income class. They fear their children will be discriminated against inside the classrooms of plush schools.
Sangeetha Gunashekar, a resident of Murphy Town, Hoysalanagar, and mother of a five-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl, is not averse to trying for admissions at plush schools in the locality, but is not sure if they will admit her son.
“What if they come up with some reason to not give him admission? The schools have not told us anything about this yet and we haven’t seen anyone from the government speak to us about this as well,” she says.
Others complain about the lack of awareness drives. “There should be posters in all localities in local languages telling us about this,” says Latha, 44, who also teaches dance to children.
“How can we be sure that our children will not be hurt if we seek admissions in big schools? They could reduce the kids’ marks or fail them or muscle them out of the school,” worries Shalini Jaikumar, mother of six-year-old Vidya.
Instead, why not reduce the fees structure of all schools, ask parents. “If they subsidised the fees, then we won’t feel like we don’t belong to a school nor will we be worried that they will do something to our children. The whole meaning of gurudakshina is that it is not free. We don’t want anything to be free,” says a slightly irate Ananthi.
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