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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

School cost doubles as govt tarries by Charu Sudan Kasturi

India may be forced to cut down on the number or compromise on the quality of model schools promised by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2007 because of a failure to execute the plan till now.

For more than two years, central and state bureaucrats have struggled to define model schools, evolve funding and management mechanisms and coax private partners to chip in — while costs have soared.

The cost of starting each new model school — proposed to be built like Kendriya Vidyalayas — has doubled over this period, the central schools have now warned the government, The Telegraph has learnt.

The central schools have estimated a cost hike from Rs 3.2 crore in 2007 when the plan was mooted to Rs 6.8 crore that will be needed now to build a model school of the same standard.

“Given the crunch in financial resources that the government of India currently faces, the hike in estimated costs poses a serious challenge,” a Planning Commission source said.

Human resource development ministry officials suggested that the financial hurdle posed by the hike in costs could be tackled without any “fundamental threat” to the project.

Schools with “good” infrastructure can be built even in Rs 3.2 crore, a ministry official argued. The first set of funds for the project was released to some states earlier this month.

But the officials accepted that the hike in costs would mean that the government might have to cut down on facilities for children, initially planned for each model school.

Cutting back on the facilities planned as critical to making the 6,000 model schools exemplars for others may also rob these schools of some of the standard-setting character originally planned.

“The concern is that we may end up starting schools... but they may not be model schools that will force other neighbouring private and government schools to pull up their socks,” an official said.

The Prime Minister had first announced the model school scheme during his Independence Day address to the nation on August 15, 2007.

The scheme was proposed as a mechanism to sow seeds of educational excellence in each block of the country.

The government had promised that 6,000 model schools would be set up — one per block — to set standards for other local schools to follow.

Of the 6,000 model schools, 2,500 are expected to be set up through public-private partnerships while the Centre and the state governments will together set up the remaining 3,500.

But the Centre has struggled to finalise a blueprint for executing the model school scheme.

A panel was set up to formulate parameters to define model schools — but the government is yet to finalise any definition.

The government also realised — well after the Prime Minister’s promise — that the country had over 7,000 blocks, and that the current plan would leave many of these blocks untouched.

The Centre has also so far been unable to evolve a public-private partnership model that is lucrative for industry yet helps the government meet larger social obligations.