Government to set up regulatory authority

Hyderabad: Taking serious note of the increasing cases of school children ending their lives, the Andhra Pradesh government has decided to establish an independent Schools Accreditation and Regulation Authority (SARA).

Highlights:

• Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu directs the School Education dept to expedite drafting of a comprehensive legislation
• Govt plans to table the bill in the ensuing Budget session of the State Assembly
• SARA is intended to keep a check on the school fee being charged by private schools and their functioning
• It will also monitor the standards being maintained in schools and their ratings
• SARA will be outside the purview of the govt and will function independently

For this, the process of drafting a comprehensive legislation has already started and the government is planning to table it in the ensuing session of the State Assembly.

Speaking to The Hans India, a top official from the State Education Department (SED) said, "The issue was discussed at the highest level. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has directed the department to expedite drafting a comprehensive legislation to establish an independent authority giving the issue a top priority.”

The SED has not received any serious complaints like school children ending their lives on account of being humiliated for non-payment of school fee. However, it is a serious issue and the SED has found several gaps in the existing executive order which has no teeth in regulation and monitoring of private schools.

The SED has been issuing notices or directions restraining the private schools from hefty increase in the school fee. But, the next day they were going to the courts and brining stay orders. It was against this backdrop that it was decided to brining a comprehensive legislation to establish SARA.

The new authority will be outside the purview of the government and functions independently. Provisions of the legislation includes, how to raise the school fee, where to be kept, transaction, auditing and reporting, role of parents, teachers, managements, maintenance of standards, rating of the schools and the like would be the part of the proposed law, he said.

The main reason for establishing an independent institution was for two reasons. First, the image of the State government is getting tarnished whenever some untoward incident takes place in the schools and for its officials not acting against the private schools. Secondly, directions issued on the basis of executive order are not able to stand to the scrutiny of the courts.

Expressing the need for such an initiative to regulate and monitor private schools, Kerala State Director of Higher Secondary Education (HSE), P K Sudheer Babu said, "The incidents of students committing suicides are more reported from the 10+2 educational institutions rather than schools in Kerala.

The private schools function independently and the regulation and accreditation provisions will definitely help in monitoring and regulating their functioning keeping in view the interest of children.”

Dr. Anthony, Deputy Director of Department of Public Instruction (DPI), Karnataka, said at local level the Gram Sabha or village council will handle such issues. At the district level, the District Level Committee (DLC) headed by the District Collector or Chief Executive Officer of the Zilla Parishad monitors the same.

In cities like Bengaluru, the DPI has its own grievance cell to handle the complaints received either by hand, email, phone and other modes, he said.

The situation in Telangana and Tamil Nadu too is not different from the other Southern states. A senior official from the education department from Tamil Nadu said, unlike in government run schools, teacher associations are not strong in case of private schools. They could not resist the pressure from the strong private schools managements.