36events, the AIADMK government in Tamil Nadu
slowly withdraws itself from providing education
through government schools. The order released
by government grants permission for private in-
dividuals, trusts or NGOs to adopt a government
school and run as its own. The current situation
of public education in Tamil Nadu is alarming
and obscures its past glory and achievements
made through inclusive policy measures from
the state government. Ever since the adoption of
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)
by the Indian government in 1995, education has
transformed into a tradable commodity and the
present situation is a mere extrapolation of its im-
pact. The state of Tamil Nadu has around 10,000
private schools which charge exorbitant fees for
the school education. The government action to
regulate fee structure through the implementa-
tion of TN Schools (Regulation of Collection of
Fee) Act in 2009 does not yield desired results.
The government itself backtracked from the Act
with its tardiness of not appointing a chairman
for the Private Schools Fee Determination Com-
mittee for around 15 months. Justice Masilamani
who took the chair from 2018 has not yet taken
any action against the breach in Act.
The budgetary allocation for education has seen
a steep decrease over the years contrary to the
promises made by successive governments at the
centre. This has resulted in a serious resource
crunch in running public educational institu-
tions.
The Right to Education Act (RTE Act), which
mandates 25% of seats in private educational in-
stitutes for students from low-income families,
has failed to make an impact due to the shortage
of funds. The schools in Tamil Nadu, irrespective
of the RTE Act, charge fees from the students of
low-income families. Private schools follow the
practice of accepting fees from RTE applicants
with a promise to reimburse once they receive
the funds from the government. This contract
has been misused by several private manage-
ments to get funds.
Contrary to the federal principles, the central
government has put the burden of RTE reim-
bursements to the state government without re-
leasing the 400 crores to implement the scheme
this year. The bleak state of affairs with the im-
plementation of the RTE Act is crippling public
education without any effort of empowerment.
Apart from this, the state government has initi-
ated plans to merge 1053 schools and close down
around 3000 government schools due to low en-
rollment and scarce resources.The lethargic action from the central government
as well as from the state government to protect
the public education made the Students Feder-
ation of India (SFI) to hold a cycle rally across
the state from May 25-31. The rally started on
25 May 2019 from four different towns of Tamil
Nadu with a call to protect public education and
to urge the parents to enrol their children in gov-
ernment schools, culminated at Tiruchirapalli on
31st May 2019 with a public meeting addressed
by Madurai MP Su. Venkatesan.
SFI put forward several demands through this
rally, which includes the increase in public spend-
ing on education and development of infrastruc-
ture. Apart from these, SFI demanded stern ac-
tion against private schools charging exorbitant
fees, non-discriminatory implementation of RTE
Act without failure, and also to protect the gov-
ernment schools through measures to increase
the enrollment.It is a crude irony
that the central
government came
up with the
draft National Education
Policy 2019 on
the same day
the cycle rally
ended
Student Struggle | June - July 2019