Schools unite for policy decisions

Jamshedpur, Dec. 19: Tired of the high-handedness of the district education department, private schools in Jamshedpur have demanded written documents of every decision taken henceforth.

In a meeting with school principals and management members yesterday, it was decided that schools would now ask the district education office to give them in writing the minutes of the meeting held on December 5.

The directives laid down by the District Education Officer (DEO) included 10 per cent seats in schools to remain vacant if the schools fail to get BPL candidates and no interviews of children for admission to nursery and kindergarten classes, regularised fee structure for all schools and official intimation in case of a slight hike. The decision comes in the wake of the state human resource ministry claiming ignorance of the district education department’s decision.

“Few of the clauses proposed by the district education officer at the December 5 meeting, like 10 per cent seats to be left vacant, are not acceptable to many schools. We have decided to ask them to provide each school with the details of the meetings in writing and will take our decision only after we get the documents,” said A.P.R. Nair, chairperson, Kerala Public Trust that runs six schools in the city. “Moreover their dictate that schools should report every change to the government too is not feasible. Therefore, we will take a stand but it would only happen after we get the written document.” The other change schools are reluctant to implement is all schools having to stop kindergarten and Plus Two admission by mid February.

In another major decision taken at the meeting today, over 30 schools from the city have decided that a seven-member core committee would now take all decisions pertaining to these schools.

“All future dealings with the education department would be through the committee,” said a principal of an ICSE school. Committee members besides Nair include businessman Bailey Bodhanwala, educationist N.K. Singh, principal of Loyola School Father Augustine Vattamattam and management members D.P. Shukla, S Chandrashekhar and Hariballav Arsi of Motilal Nehru Public School, DBMS English School and Sri Krishna Public School respectively.