EVEN AS ADMISSIONS HAVE BEGUN for the current academic year starting June/July, confusion about rules and regulations governing admission of tiny tots aged three-four years in Delhi’s estimated 6,600 composite private schools offering nursery education has not cleared despite a rain of legislation, litigation, clarification notifications and rules drawn up by the Delhi state government, courts and committees. In a major setback to private schools, on January 20 in Action Committee of Unaided Recognised Private Schools vs. Lt. Governor & Ors. (W.P.(C)177/2014), the Delhi high court dismissed a writ seeking a stay of the lieutenant governor’s nursery admission guidelines of December 18 which abolished a 20 percent discretionary admission quota of institutional managements. The stand-off between the Delhi state government and composite private schools dates back to 2002, when in a PIL (public interest litigation) Social Jurist vs. Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi & Ors. (CW No.3156 of 2002), the court ordered the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to take “appropriate action” against 265 “recognised, private unaided” schools in the Delhi NCR (national capital region) which had been allotted land (by DDA) at concessional prices on condition they reserve a 25 percent free-of-charge quota for socio-economically disadvantaged children in their neighbourhoods. This victory prompted Social Jurist and other NGOs to file successful PILs which resulted in incremental government control over admission age, tuition fees (Modern School vs.Union of India & Ors), and prohibition of parent or child interviews for nursery admissions. (NB: The Delhi state government’s rules and regulations and high court judgements are inapplicable to independent, stand-alone preschools). “Abolishing the small 20 percent management quota in nursery education could well be the last straw. Private school promoters have invested heavily in their nurseries and kindergartens. But with their administrative autonomy over nurseries completely eroded, they may well start shutting them down. This will make life very difficult for Delhi’s middle class,” warns R.C. Jain, president of the Delhi State Public Schools Management Association (estb. 1992) which has a membership of 800 institutions. Even establishment educationists with experience in the Central and state government education ministries are waking to the dangers of the licence-permit-quota regimen migrating from industry into education. “Good schools in Delhi offering composite K-12 education are few and far between, and excessive regulation is likely to dishearten current and future promoters from offering nursery schooling. School managements should be given some measure of autonomy and flexibility. Most government schools don’t offer nursery education and the handful who do, have few takers, particularly within the middle class,” says Ashok Ganguly, former chairman of CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) — the country’s largest pan-India school-leaving examination board promoted and governed by the Union human resource development ministry. With wisdom about the ill-effects of excessive regulation of private education beginning to dawn upon the educators’ community, it’s high time parents who clamour for government intervention and regulation of private schools also start reading the writing on the wall. Garima Upadhyay (Delhi) Forced cooperation Uncertainty and confusion continue to surround…
