The Price We Pay for Schools

Via livemint.com

Few people link the government’s Sixth Pay Commission with the price of private school education. But on reading the fine print, both central board accreditation and the state government’s no-objection certificates for private schools require “pay parity” with government schoolteachers. As a result, many private schools have received government notices to implement this Sixth Pay Commission parity with retrospective effect from 1 January 2006. Many complied and raised fees by 25-60%.

This raise became the breaking point in a simmering confrontation between parents and schools: 15 parents associations in New Delhi, Ludhiana, Kanpur, Indore, Allahabad and Mumbai held street protests and filed court cases asking for fee rollbacks and controls. Public interest litigation filed in the Allahabad high court said, “In Greater Noida there is only one government school. Parents do not have any option except to send their wards to unaided private schools. The petitioners’ grievance is that recognized private, unaided schools in Uttar Pradesh are indulging in the large-scale commercialization of education, which is against public interest. This commercialization has reached an alarming situation because of the failure of the government to perform its statutory function. The fee hike and arrears will break the backbone of parents, especially in the present recessionary period and this association has been formed to fight the arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional acts of unaided private schools.”

Our school system has problems of capacity (there aren’t enough schools), outcomes (students drop out because of poor value for money or time, output is not work-ready), and inclusiveness (many children don’t have access to quality education). Many parents (poor or rich) choose private schools over government ones: The latter have the same instructor teaching multiple grades, no separate toilets for girls, no English teaching, poor resources, and 35% of the teachers don’t show up for work. This despite government teachers being paid better (the new minimum salary for a government teacher and peon in Uttar Pradesh is Rs18,000 and Rs11,500 per month, respectively) and better qualified than most private schoolteachers.

Moreover, the government’s inability to perform its role with public sector schools will not go away by raising fingers at the private sector.

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