Although it’s not politically correct to say so, India’s private K-12 (and pre-primary) schools are the only shining institutions of our fast obsolescing — if not already obsolete — education system. The proof is that although there are only an estimated 90,000 of them (320,000 according to the Union human resource development ministry which enumerates the primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary sections of a school as four schools), over 40 percent of the country’s 260 million school-going children are in fees-levying private (including 400,000 ‘unrecognised’ private budget schools which have mushroomed countrywide). The point to note is that all children attending private schools where their parents often have to pay stiff tuition fees, have the option to enroll in the neighbouring free-of-charge state or local government school. Unfortunately, most people including politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and even justices of the Supreme Court seem to believe that Smart classrooms, highly-qualified teachers, science and computer labs, playing fields and swimming pools which many private schools provide, fall from the sky like manna from heaven, and that private school promoters who invest huge resources and run the gauntlet of the education bureaucracy, must necessarily be philanthropists. Moreover, private school managements shouldn’t be permitted to run their schools according to their lights but according to directions of the neta-babu brotherhood, which has patently failed to uplift government schools. Curiously, a rising number of middle class parents who would shudder at the thought of signing up their precious progeny in the neighbouring government school, and who usually take great pains to send their children to private schools, are foolishly inviting greater government interference in private education. Across the country, parents protesting tuition fee hikes in private schools, are inviting state governments to ‘regulate’ their fees. I believe that letting in the Trojan horse of government into private schools is highly inadvisable. Instead, parents’ associations negotiating inevitable fee increases directly with the managements of their children’s schools, is a more intelligent option. The rationale of this opinion is discussed in this month’s cover story. As you may have discerned, I believe private edupreneurs, philanthropists and trusts manage education institutions far better than bloated impersonal government bureaucracies. That’s why last year, we instituted the EducationWorld Private Higher Education Rankings 2016-17 to encourage India’s private universities, engineering institutes and B-schools to strive for excellence. To this end, following the EW India Private Higher Education Rankings 2017-18 we have introduced an awards night to celebrate and felicitate the country’s best private institutions in these three categories. A report of the full-card awards nite which includes a keynote address and panel discussion is followed by a pictorial essay.
