Chhattisgarh private schools face off with government over RTE reimbursement, announce ‘non-cooperation’

Private schools across Chhattisgarh have announced a non-cooperation movement against the government over demands of increasing the reimbursement amount provided under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 or RTE (Right to Education).

The school owners are alleging that the government is insensitive towards their long standing demand to suitably compensate for their expenses on the education of poor children.

Rajeev Gupta, chairman of the Chhattisgarh Private School Management Association (CPSMA), told The Hindu the non-cooperation would mean private schools would not cooperate in any work of the School Education department, nor would any of their letters/notices/orders be responded to.

“These order mostly pertain to periodic updates about the progress of students who take admission under the RTE or about audits on compliance of RTE norms. Apart from that our buses are used for government for their events. We will not provide those either,” he said.

Under the provisions of the RTE, 25% of the seats in entry-level classes in private schools have to be reserved for students from weaker sections of society. Mr. Gupta said the non-cooperation at this juncture might affect the admission process for the next academic session as the student registration and nodal verification process was on between February 16 and March 31. This would be followed by lottery and allotment of schools and school admissions which begins in August.

Nilotpal Datta, vice-president of the Jagdalpur arm of the CPSMA, said the schools were left with no choice but to go for non-cooperation because the administration was insensitive to their demands that the schools were struggling to keep up with the rising expenses incurred on educating the children.

“The reimbursements have not been kept up. We have demanded that the reimbursement amount provided to the schools under the RTE should be increased from ₹7,000 to ₹18,000 per student/per year in primary classes, from ₹11,500 to ₹22,000 in secondary and from ₹15,000 to ₹25,000 in high and higher secondary classes and this increased amount should be provided for the last three years,” he said.

Mr. Gupta said that in Chhattisgarh, the amounts had not been revised since 2012. In 33 districts of the State, there were 6,844 private schools in which there were 19,886 seats at the entry level, he added.

Delhi example

He added that while the RTE was a Central legislation and its major financial component came from the Centre, other States had hiked the sums provided to schools. He specifically cited the example of Delhi which was providing ₹25,000 at the primary level.

“The government says it does not have money but in the same period, an MLA’s salary has gone up from ₹45,000 to ₹1,60,000, an IAS officer’s salary in the same period has also gone up. If the government tells us it has no money and it won’t hike the salary for others, we will withdraw our non-cooperation,” said Mr. Gupta.

Officials from the School Education department were unavailable for a comment.