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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Why burden us, ask private schools by Basant Kumar Mohanty

Today's Supreme Court judgment saying all private schools other than unaided minority schools must reserve one in four seats for poor children has provoked dismay in private schools.

Principals of leading private schools in Delhi said the 25 per cent reservation would impose a severe financial burden on them.

"The government should take care of education for the poor. Why cannot the government open new schools? Why are they pushing the 25 per cent burden onto us?" said Madhulika Sen, principal of Tagore International School, one of several institutions that had petitioned the apex court seeking relief from the 25 per cent rule.

However, the government says the judgment has brought clarity to the implementation of the Right to Education Act, which mandates free and compulsory education for every Indian child.

"The private schools do not get any aid from the government, but we give government pay scale to our teachers," Sen said. "We pay electricity, water and property tax at commercial rates. The pressure on us to implement the reservation would affect quality."

The government will reimburse the private schools at a rate equivalent to what it spends on a child's education at its own schools: between Rs 6,000 and Rs 17,000 a year. This is far lower than what the leading private schools charge in cities: Rs 50,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh per student per year.

"We have to provide textbooks and uniforms to the children too," Sen said, adding that at her school, the textbooks and uniforms cost around Rs 5,000 a year per child. "The government's reimbursement rate in Delhi is Rs 1,190 per child per month, which comes to around Rs 14,000 a year. After spending on textbook and uniform, only Rs 9,000 will be left. How can you manage with this?"

Sen said schools cannot offset the cost by raising the fees for the remaining 75 per cent students since the Delhi government's regulations bar schools from increasing fees by more than 10 per cent per year. Another option is to increase the student intake. "But schools are not-for-profit institutions; we do not have the money to expand the facilities," Sen said.

The Forum for Quality Education, a body of private institutions that had moved the apex court, has not decided what it will do next. "We will meet soon to decide our (course of) action," Sen said.

Usha Ram, principal of Laxman Public School, said: "The government should compensate (private schools) in a proper manner. The compensation should be the same as what the private schools charge students on an average," she said.
 
The government will issue separate guidelines for private residential schools since the present reimbursement rate would be too low for them, considering the costs of board and lodging.

A key part of the judgment is the exemption given to unaided minority institutions, who are granted this status by the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI) or state governments. However, certain communities that are minorities at the national level are majorities in some states.

"Schools run by Christians in Mizoram, Meghalaya and Nagaland and those run by Sikhs in Punjab may not get the exemption from the reservation," former NCMEI member J.C. Kurian said.
 
HRD minister Kapil Sibal said: "We are grateful to the Supreme Court for providing clarity.