The Craze for Private Schools

The long midnight queues for procurement for application forms for Kindergarten admission continues unabatedly in various cities of the country. With Parents ever prepared to try all the tricks in the book the demand for Private schools has increased multifold. Recommendations and capitation have become indispensible for Kindergarten admissions. The RTI Act of 2009, which mandates all schools of the country to offer free education to 25% of its sanctioned strength, has played a key role in increase of the demand.

The Private schools are run by Trust Act with Profit as its main motive rather than service or charity. The schools have all the Ingredients of a capitalist institution, underpaid staff with hire and fire service rules, excess tuition fees- than recommended by the regulators, fees for other services offered and overhead fees under various extra and co-curricular heads.  

On the other hand, the State Schools of Tamil Nadu offer free education to all and iced with a host of other benefits. Free books, uniforms, cycle, Laptops and even assured promotion up to eighth standard. The meritorious are selected by the state, staff these schools. The freebies, well trained and experienced staff never attract the attention of the society.

The Indian society recognizes the importance of Education. Even the poorer of the poorest wants to give a quality education his/her ward. The general notion of the society is state education is, meant only for the poor, the state schools can never offer a quality education, Tamil medium instruction hinders English proficiency, and Government teachers never perform. The Government teachers themselves do have similar reservations about these schools; they never admit there wards in these schools.

Quality comes at a price, the state spends crores of rupees on education; in the form of salary, noon meal scheme, training, and other freebies, but still people admit their wards only to these schools out of financial necessity not out of his enthusiasm to offer a quality education to his ward. The politician’s Linguistic chauvinism has kept these still in vernacular mediums, poor Infrastructure, poor instruction delivery, lack of computing facilities, negligible extra or co-curricular activities, large scale dropouts and poor results, dent the image the these schools.

The Government must take some proactive and creative steps to revive these schools. The state Investment in education is huge; it should at least change the medium of instruction in these schools.