AP House passes law to regulate schools

Amaravati: Assembly passed The School Education Regulatory and Monitoring Commission Bill, 2019 on Monday.

According to the government, the bill provides for setting up of a commission that will "maintain standards of school education, regulation of fee, competences of teachers, information disclosure, effective inspection, monitoring of schools, implementation of the provisions of RTE Act, 2009, punitive measures on defaulting schools and to regulate all the matters pertaining to school education".

Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, during discussion on the bill in Assembly, termed it as "historic and revolutionary" bill. He expressed regret over the inefficiency of the previous government in controlling the fee and failure in regulating and managing the corporate schools, which have been looting parents.

"We just maintained silence, even though we aware of the daylight robbery of the private school managements in the state. The corporate school management and owners were the ministers in the previous government.

That was the main reason why we were unable to control the incredulous fee structure in the state," the Chief Minister explained in the House.

The corporate educational institutions in the state have been collecting fees from Rs 63,000 to Rs 1 lakh for even the LKG, UKG, First and Second classes. If this fee structure continues , we may not even imagine about the education in our state in the near future, Jagan observed.

He stated that the political leaders and corporate institutions have destroyed the government schools in a planned manner, for the benefit of the private schools.

All the private schools must provide 25 per cent of seats at free of cost for the poor students, according to the Right to Education Act. They must maintain normal fee.

But, for the last five years, not even a single private school implemented the RTE Act. This paved the way for private school managements to increase the fee as per their wish and will, the Chief Minister said.

He said that the government will appoint a retired High Court judge as chairman of this commission, as suggested by the AP HC Chief Justice. In addition, 11 experts will be appointed as members in the commission.

Grading of schools, implementation of RTE Act, accreditation of schools and monitoring of the educational institutions and other matters will come under the purview of the commission.

Besides giving warning to the school managements, the commission can close the schools, if they do not comply with the rules, regulations and Acts related to the education system in the state, Chief Minister said.

Earlier, during the question hour, school education minister Adimulapu Suresh said the government would take action against the irregularities of private organisations and steps were already initiated in this regard.

All the problems in education system were identified by the government and required measures would be taken to solve the problems, he said.

YSRCP member Abbaiah Chowdary said that the education system should be changed totally. He asked the minister to introduce the rating system for government schools based on their performance.

MLA C Jagga Reddy also said that the corporate schools totally dominated the education system. He said that the previous government closed several schools in the name of rationalisation in favour of corporate schools' management.