THE HIGH HOPES GENERATED WITHIN West Bengal’s intelligentsia and academics in the bright summer of 2011 after the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress routed the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government which uninterruptedly (mis)ruled this benighted state for 34 years (1977-2011), levelling down the state’s once envied education system, have evaporated. 

The disappointment of West Bengal’s intelligentsia and bhadralok (‘refined middle class’) during TMC’s first term in office (2011-16) is turning into alarm after the party’s second term following the legislative assembly election of 2016 in which the TMC was returned to power in Writers’ Building, Kolkata, with an even greater majority. Far from introducing economic, social and education policies which are polar opposites of the CPM-led Left Front government, Banerjee seems to be taking leaves out of populist CPM governance manuals.

For instance, responding to complaints of exorbitant tuition fees allegedly being levied by private schools, in March last year, the TMC government formed a 15-member “self-regulatory commission”, comprising representatives of the director general of police, commissioner of Kolkata police and of the city’s top-ranked La Martiniere, Modern High, St. Xavier’s, South Point, DPS, Heritage, Shri Shikshayatan and Loreto schools to “review the operations”, i.e, finances, of private schools in the year ended March 31, 2017.

One year later after studying the commission’s report, on March 23 the state’s school education department, has outlined differentiated fee structures for 1,000 upscale private schools affiliated with CISCE, CBSE and the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education. The fee structures proposed for primary-secondary schools by the self-regulatory commission will be placed before chief minister Mamata Banerjee by end-April, and could be promulgated by an ordinance in May-June, before start of the new academic year.

According to reliable sources within the commission, private schools have been classified into four-five categories with tuition fee ceilings prescribed for each category. Factors such as location, average fee, number of students, expenditure incurred by school on salaries of teaching and non-teaching staff, facilities provided and educational qualifications of teachers have been taken into consideration while recommending annual tuition fees and fixing ceilings for pre-primary, primary, middle, secondary and higher secondary schools. Moreover, henceforth private schools will be obliged to post their tuition and other fees on their websites and are likely to be allowed a maximum development fee increase of 10 percent per year, and will have to establish grievance panels for fees-related issues. Annual tuition fee increases will be subject to the approval of self-regulatory committees. 

Unsurprisingly, leaders of West Bengal and Kolkata’s top-ranked English-medium schools which have survived the worst efforts of Left Front governments spread over 34 years to level them down, have again become fearful of government interference with the administration of private independent schools struggling with inflation and rising teachers’ salaries. “In our diverse country, government has to accept variety and respect the management and operational autonomy of private education institutions. Government regulation of tuition fees of private independent schools could result in their being reduced to the status of government institutions,” warns Devi Kar, director of Kolkata’s Modern High School for Girls (estb.1952), ranked West Bengal’s #3 all-girls day school in the EW India School Rankings 2017-18.

The message that the state government needs to upgrade its own free-of-charge public schools rather than unduly interfere with private institutions seems to have struck a responsive chord in the TMC government. On March 6, chief minister Banerjee announced a plan to start English-medium government primaries in 19 districts of the state. 

Bilateral self-regulation of schools through PTAs (parent-teacher associations) or similar committees with parental participation — long advocated by EducationWorld — and simultaneously improving rock-bottom teaching-learning standards in government schools, is a much better strategy for overall improvement of school education. If this two-pronged approach is followed in letter and spirit by the TMC government, West Bengal may yet recover its lost reputation for education excellence.

 Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)