Date: 26-Feb-2014

To

The Hon’ble Minister for Primary and High School Education
Government of Karnataka
Vidhana Soudha
Bangalore – 560 001

Copy to:

Principal Secretary
Primary and High School Education
Department of Education
Multi-Storied Building
Bangalore – 560 001
State of Karnataka

The Commissioner for Public Instruction
Primary and High School Education
Department of Education
Nrupatunga Road
Bangalore – 560 001
State of Karnataka

Sub: Children cannot be admitted against the 25% Reservation under the ‘Right of Children To Free And Compulsory Education Act, 2009’ in private unaided schools unless the Government cannot first find seats for them in Government Schools, schools run by local authorities or private aided schools.

For the forthcoming Academic Year, 2014-15, members of “Karnataka Unaided Schools Management’s Association” will refuse to admit children under the 25% reservation unless they are individually assured that the said children could not be admitted in the neighbourhood Government schools, schools run by local authorities or private aided schools due to lack of seats therein.

Dear Sir
1. The official declaration of the Government of Karnataka is, in its own words:

“Nearly 4 out of every 5 elementary schools in the State are either run by the Government or supported by the Government;
Nearly 9 out of 10 lower primary schools are managed by the Government”

2. And, to desire that those who have earned a good name or reputation should suffer some misfortune and to take delight therein is known as ‘schadenfreude’ and Schopenhauer, the renowned philosopher had cautioned that,

“The worst trait in human nature…is schadenfreude”.

3. I write here on instruction from and for the benefit of:
Karnataka Unaided Schools Management’s Association (‘KUSMA’ for short) is organized as a ‘Society’ whose members are comprised only of educational institutions in the State of Karnataka. This ‘Society’ is registered under the State law in force for the registration of ‘Societies’ and has been continually registered at all relevant times – S.No.438/83-84 dated 08-Mar-1984. Membership to this ‘Society’ is open only to those educational institutions which are privately organized and which do not receive aid or assistance of any kind from the Government, State or Central. Membership to KUSMA is strictly enforced and the current membership of KUSMA stands slightly above one thousand eight hundred educational institutions.

4. The enforcement of the ‘Right of Children To Free And Compulsory Education Act, 2009’ (‘RTE’ or ‘RTE Act’ for short) in the State of Karnataka has fully exposed the lack of preparation on the part of officers of the State Government.

5. Section 12(1) of the RTE Act speaks of reservation in favour of children from socially and economically backward classes to the extent of 25% in private unaided schools. You may kindly recollect that most of the associations representing private unaided schools had approached the Hon’ble Supreme Court against the various provisions of the RTE Act. KUSMA was the only major association that did not join such a challenge against RTE in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court went on to hold that the RTE Act could not be enforced against unaided minority educational institutions. Therefore, non-minority private unaided educational institutions are fully subject to the provisions of the RTE. This much is not in dispute.

6. Now, the RTE Act merely says that there shall be a reservation in private unaided schools to the extent of 25% in favour of children from socially and educationally backward classes of citizens. And, the whole law of RTE is built on the concept of ‘neighbourhood’. That is to say, children from a given neighbourhood should, as far as practicable, receive education in their own neighbourhood and should not be compelled to travel to a different neighbourhood merely to receive elementary education (Std. I to VIII). Suppose, we have a neighbourhood, say a specially developed and built township for the affluent and wealthy in which there simply are very few children from the socially and educationally backward classes of citizens. And, a couple of schools come to be established in this township. Obviously, there would be no compulsion upon such schools to shut down simply because they could not find many children to fill in the 25% reservation. In a situation like this, the RTE law would be interpreted to only mean an obligation to enrol available reservation children only. Similarly, say there is a district that has a good network of government schools and also a large number of private unaided schools. Say, the children who are eligible to be admitted under the 25% reservation in that district is 500 but the 25% quota seats in all private schools combined therein is say, 5000. In a situation such as this, most private unaided schools in that district may end up enrolling reservation children to an extent of below 25% of their strength. In fact, in the last academic year itself, hundreds of schools in the State of Karnataka individually witnessed enrolment of less than 10% under the RTE quota. If RTE law were interpreted to mean a compulsory enrolment of the full 25% reservation irrespective of availability of such children, thousands of schools across the country would have to shut down today. It is therefore, evident that any such interpretation would be wholly wrong.

7. Building from the above reasoning, KUSMA would demand that, for the academic year 2014-2015, the enrolment of reservation children to the extent of 25% in private unaided schools in the State be done in any given neighbourhood as under:

8. The RTE Act regulates four classes of educational institutions. They are:
i. Government schools,

ii. Schools that are run by the local authorities;

iii. Private Aided Schools and

iv. Private Unaided Schools

The data published by the Government of India in respect of the State of Karnataka would show that, there were 70851 elementary schools in the State. The break-up thereof is as under:

Class of Schools

Number of Schools

Percentage of Total

Government Schools

56305

79.47

Private Aided Schools

3160

4.46

Private Unaided Schools
11386

16.07

Total

70851

100.00



9. As may be seen from the above, out of every 100 schools in the State of Karnataka, 80 schools are Government schools and 4 schools are private aided schools. Therefore, private unaided schools in the State constitute a mere 16% of the overall number of schools. Further, the data published by the Central Government would also show that 87% of all elementary schools in the State are situated in rural areas. And, 89% of all rural elementary schools are Government schools. Nearly 76.36 lakh students were enrolled in elementary schools across the State.

10. The exact word of the Government of Karnataka on the above statistic is:
“Nearly 4 out of every 5 elementary schools in the State are either run by the Government or supported by the Government;
Nearly 9 out of 10 lower primary schools are managed by the Government”

11. Therefore, in order to subject the mere 16% private unaided schools in the State to 25% reservation under the RTE, KUSMA would demand that the enrolment of children proposed to be admitted in private unaided schools under the 25% reservation for the forthcoming academic year be staggered as under:

a) The Government schools in the neighbourhood should be the first and foremost choice for enrolment;

b) Schools run by the local authorities in the neighbourhood should rank next in order for the purpose of enrolment;

c) Private aided schools in the neighbourhood should rank next after a) and b) above and

d) Private unaided schools should be considered for enrolment only after there is a shortage despite enrolment in Government schools, schools run by local authorities and private aided schools.

12. In other words, private unaided schools cannot be told to enrol children under the 25% reservation if seats in Government schools, schools run by local authorities and private aided schools are all going empty due to the failure of the officers of the Education Department to first look to those three categories of schools.

13. You may kindly note that the RTE law is built on the concept of need for education and is not intended to create any preference in society for education in private unaided schools only. No part of the RTE Act says any such thing as ‘education in Government schools or schools run by local authorities is inferior to education in private unaided schools’. As such, it was never the intention of the RTE Act to sound the death knell of Government schools and schools run by local authorities.

14. You may note that almost all central taxes come with a 2% education cess and across India, Governments have spent thousands of crores of rupees on establishing schools for the poor and the needy and the State of Karnataka itself has spent hundreds of crores of rupees to establish and administer schools by itself and through local authorities. When such is the case, it would be opposed to ordinary common sense as well as fiscal prudence for the officers of the Department of Education to ignore seats in Government schools, schools run by local authorities and private aided schools and to only turn towards private unaided schools.

15. Private unaided schools survive on their own through funds from parents. While it is true that a good number of private unaided schools is quite unscrupulous, a number of private unaided schools are run transparently, ethically and in obedience to the laws of the State.

16. The Parliament of India, speaking through the RTE, has not said that education in Government schools is inferior to education in private schools. When the Parliament intended to provide for reservation in private schools, the Parliament clearly knew that thousands of crores had already been spent on Government schools and still, children from the socially and economically backward class were not catered to by the available Government schools. It is in this context that the RTE law put in a reservation in private schools. So, the RTE cannot be implemented by the Government of Karnataka in a manner so as to dry the existing Government schools and schools run by local authorities. Moreover, the Government of Karnataka is incurring substantial expenditure towards salaries of teachers in Government schools, schools run by local authorities and private aided schools. Such commitment to pay teachers would rather seem perverse if the officers of the Department of Education would act in such a way as to ensure migration of children from Government schools in favour of private unaided schools. After all, lakhs of teachers who must receive their monthly salaries in Government schools, schools run by local authorities and private aided schools cannot be expected to teach to empty benches if the Department of Education would cultivate among parents of children from the socially and economically backward classes, a preference for private unaided schools only.

17. Data published by the Central Government would show that 2,28,681 teachers were in employment in Government elementary schools in Karnataka. For some mysterious reason, both the Central Government and the State Government seem to be reluctant to publish the item-wise monetary spending on education. The exact word of the Karnataka Government is that:

“Over 90% of the budget for school education in Karnataka is spent on salaries to Government primary and secondary school teachers and as grant-in-aid to aided institutions…”

18. However, assuming conservatively that the salary of a teacher in a Government school is not less than Rs.12000 per month and given that there are 2,28,681 teachers employed in Government elementary schools in the State, the payment by the Government of salaries of teachers in its own elementary schools is as under:

2,28,681 Government Teachers * Rs.12000 pm = Rs.274.40 Crores per month.

19. Annually, the Government teachers in elementary schools in the State would therefore receive, Rs.274.40 Crores * 12 months = Rs.3292.80 Crores. In perspective, this Rs.3292 Crores is far more than the combined annual global theatrical revenue of all the four southern film industries put together. In other words, the money spent by the Government of Karnataka on teachers’ salaries in Government schools in any year is far more than the total box-office receipts of every Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam film released in theatres across the world in a given year. Despite such a massive financial commitment by the State Government to pay its own teachers in Government schools, it is a mystery as to why the officers of the Department of Education are trying to dry Government schools. The teachers in Government schools are contractually entitled to receive their salaries irrespective of whether or not they have any work to do in Government schools. So, what kind of inexplicable logic has the Department of Education fallen prey to in now pushing children from Government schools to prefer private unaided schools?

20. A parent who is poor and cannot afford to pay the regular fees in a private unaided school cannot legally claim that education in Government schools or schools run by local authorities or private aided schools is not acceptable to him and that he would admit his child only under the 25% reservation in private unaided schools. If any person would read the RTE Act carefully, he will nowhere find any such right vested in a parent. Therefore, the Government would do well to simply ignore such ‘misguided vanity’ in any parent and should admit his child in the available Government school, school run by the local authority or private aided school. It is only if there is no physical availability in these three classes of schools could the Government enrol those children in a private unaided school and even then, not in a choice of the parent but in a randomly selected private unaided school in the neighbourhood. You may see from the RTE Act that admissions therein are to be made in a random manner and not through personal preference or selection.

21. Therefore, you are hereby informed that the members of KUSMA have been constrained to come to the decision to not admit children under the 25% reservation under the RTE for the forthcoming academic year unless they are individually assured that the children they are told to admit under the 25% reservation could not be accommodated in Government-run schools, schools run by local authorities or private aided schools in the neighbourhood.

22. Finally, it is quite evident that the officers of the Department of Education seem to take special delight in vexing reputed private unaided schools in the name of RTE. To desire that those who have earned a good name or reputation should suffer some misfortune and to take delight therein is known as ‘schadenfreude’ and Schopenhauer, the renowned philosopher had cautioned that,

“The worst trait in human nature…is schadenfreude”.

Sincerely

K.V.DHANANJAY

Advocate