The start of the new academic year marks the culmination of a season when parents are obliged to pull every string and use their influence with politicians, bureaucrats, high court judges and even media personnel to put in a word for admission of their wards into the country’s top-ranked day, boarding and international schools. Dilip Thakore investigates For the great majority of middle class India’s young parents with children in the age group four-six, the start of the new academic year in June marks the culmination of months of frenzied running around to secure admission into primary-secondary schools of their choice. Except for parents in the super-rich bracket who have the option of enrolling their offspring in the multiplying number of new private international schools affiliated with offshore examination boards and levying tuition fees of Rs.3-5 lakh per year, other households have a hard time getting their children into affordable English-medium (aka ‘convent’) schools whose number is estimated at 70,000 countrywide. This is the season when parents are obliged to pull every string and use their influence with politicians, bureaucrats, high court judges and even media personnel, to put in a word with promoters, trustees, headmasters and principals of the country’s best day, legacy boarding and even the top new genre international schools, to admit their wards. Consequently it’s also a harrowing time for school principals who often become incomm-unicado, as phone calls and chits from the country’s highest offices impose unbearable pressure upon them to make out-of-turn admissions. Regrettable but true, the mad rush for school admissions also provides opportunity for less upright private school promoters and principals to make windfall gains by demanding illegal capitation fees and donations through a network of agents including in a famous instance, a barber plying his trade in the neighbourhood of a top-ranked vintage day school in Bangalore. Principals and parents are well aware that venal, patronage-dispensing politicians and bureaucrats at the Centre and in the states have ruined the country’s 1.20 million government primary schools, rendering them a no-go zone for the upwardly mobile middle class. Therefore for the 60 million middle-class households, admission into India’s 80,000 (200,000 as enumerated by government which counts primary, upper primary, high and higher secon-dary schools as separate units) private schools is a do-or-die mission, which will determine and shape the future of their children. But with the ‘supply’ of new schools constricted by soaring real estate prices, bureaucratic red tape and corruption for which contemporary India has acquired global notoriety, the pressure for admission into the country’s 80,000 ‘recognised’ private schools is intensifying year on year. Even the lower subaltern classes which had hitherto been fobbed off with indifferent, free-of-charge government vernacular education, are begin-ning to flee in growing numbers to the country’s estimated 400,000 illegal private ‘budget’ schools which offer English language, even if not English-medium education while demanding — and getting — tuition fees of Rs.100-500 per month. According to a Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (education for all) programme analysis for Karnataka, reported in…
