PANEL DISCUSSION Government should not regulate private preschools With several state governments enacting registration and operational regulations for private preschools, the first panel discussion of the EW ECE Global Conference 2016 featuring Swati Popat Vats (SPV), founder-president of the Early Childhood Association of India; Jaya Sastri (JS), founder-director of SEED group of preschools, Chennai; Dr. Padmini, trustee of the Child Rights Trust, Bangalore; and Kavita Anand (KA), founder-director of Adhyayan Quality Education Services Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai and chaired by Dilip Thakore (DT), editor, EducationWorld, deliberated the subject ‘Government should not regulate private preschools’. DT: For over six decades since independence, private preschools have been outside the purview of government control. But recently several state governments have proposed to regulate them. For instance, in Tamil Nadu the state government has promulgated a code of regulations for private preschools while in Delhi the AAP government has imposed tuition fee ceilings and other regulations. This despite the fact that the record of government regulation of primary-secondary education has been disastrous. Corrupt education inspectors have failed to raise standards, and routinely turn a blind eye to all types of violations. In particular, government schools which should be regulated by government are in a shambles. In higher education, none of our universities, which are government regulated, are ranked in the Top 200 World University Rankings league tables. Against this backdrop, should the heavy hand of government be imposed on the country’s flourishing private preschools or should they self-regulate? SPV: For all these years, early childhood education was relegated to the back burner. Now suddenly the government wants to regulate it. I am curious about this sudden change of heart and suspect that it’s been discovered as a revenue source. The world is not changed by intention, it’s changed by example. So what example has the government set with the administration of 1.6 million government anganwadis run under the ICDS programme? All governments worldwide which have prescribed regulations for private ECCE centres, have first set an example with their own government-run preschools. Moreover these countries don’t regulate, they set guidelines and non-negotiables in ECCE, followed with a transparent process of supervision and licensing. On the other hand, government regulation of private preschools in Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka, begins with levying registration fees. This is followed with regulation of tuition fees chargeable. Moreover, state governments are framing control and command regulations while completely ignoring the Central government’s National ECCE Policy of 2013 which has set ten non-negotiable quality benchmarks for ECCE in India. DT: Jaya, what is the situation in Tamil Nadu? JS: It’s a bit different. Private preschool managements were invited by the government to give their suggestions for framing regulations, and tuition fees are not controlled. I believe some type of government regulation in ECCE is necessary to enforce quality standards. For the past few years under the ECA (Early Childhood Association) banner, we have unsuccessfully attempted to get preschools in the state to adhere to ECA prescribed standards. But ECA had only five members in the…
