Loosen purse strings for good education

Earlier this month, we reported about an inquiry by the education department into complaints that some government-aided private schools were collecting more fees than prescribed.

The fees were collected to buy equipment for ‘audio-visual’ rooms with computers that students at most schools take for granted. Some money was also meant to pay water bills, electricity charges and meet building maintenance cost.

An education department official said that since the schools get government grant, they cannot collect more fees. The official also said that the schools have been asked to return the fees.
What the official did not say was that hundreds of schools, including the two schools mentioned in the report, have not been paid a large part of the grant since 2003.

Aided schools get three kinds of grants. One part covers salaries paid to teachers and staff, a smaller grant covers free schooling for students from backward communities and the rest is ‘non-salary’ grant that finances expenses such as water charges, property taxes and other establishment expenses. This money has not been paid.

The education department owes nearly Rs8 lakh to one of the schools that was investigated recently. The government says that it does not have the money.

Like other schools that have not been paid, this institution caters to children from economically weak families. The school wants to provide facilities like computers, but cannot since it is not allowed to collect more money from parents.

Caught in a financial mess, the school management finally asked 1,000-odd students to contribute Rs500 annually. But parents protested and local politicians, eager to use the issue as a bargaining aid to coerce the school to admit students they recommend, entered the fray. They complained to the education department. The inquiry followed.

Another school that was asked to return the fees has not received the aid since 2005. “We are supposed to get Rs92,000 per year. That is peanuts. But we have not received even that,” said a school official. Here, the Parents Association collected around Rs1,200 from each student and gave it to the school so that it could run its computer room. This is about Rs100 a month, but it was enough to make penny-pinching parents complain.

The schools affected include the 125-odd run by the Catholic church. Many schools called up community groups to complain about harassment by parents and education officers.

While nobody is making a case for schools to make arbitrary demands for money, the issue here is about paying a few hundred rupees to meet expenses that should have been taken care of by the government. What can you buy for Rs500 nowadays?

A meal for three at a fast food restaurant or two tickets at a multiplex? Can’t parents, expecting a decent education for their children, pay even this much?

The aided schools, unlike the elite unaided ones, serve the lower and middle strata of society with similar high quality education at a lower fee,” said Joseph Dias of the Catholic Secular Forum, which has asked the Catholic church to shut down its schools for a day as a sign of protest.