Schools

All about Schools

It is stated that every school will follow the education code of respective state into which it is located with respect to the organization of Management, its working, its building and safety measures etc. The school before going to either of the Central Board will obtain a no-objection certificate and submit it to the board before seeking affiliation.

On affiliation it is understandable that it will follow the affiliation bye-laws and agree to follow it in amended format as and when required. The affiliation bye-laws impose certain condition on the school regarding infra-structure, curriculum, admission policies, appointment of teaching and non teaching staff and the salaries payable to them. The schools abide by them in toto.

The schools show in express terms the fee and fund structure to aid their managerial capacity and ability and submit an audited report. Schools going to CBSE have to maintain a reserve fund equal to the three months salary of the teaching staff besides paying affiliation fee and other expenses.

They agree to appoint their staff in accordance with the CBSE bye-laws and submit their certificates along with the affiliation documents. They are supposed to follow NCERT and CBSE curriculum, in case the schools are affiliated with CBSE.  Besides the CBSE provisions, all schools have to abide by the RTE, SSA, Education Code, PF Rules and other Service Rules. They have to maintain a unique character in area for which they have to manage with the quality checks like studies, facilities, amenities etc. Parents are lured to choose them for their wards on account of these facilities.

CBSE wants every school to upload their data on its website for the inspection and information of the parents. This include the fee and fund structure, classes and strength, the list of teachers along with their qualification and salary, syllabus, list of holidays and other notices. This data is freely accessible to all students and their parents alike. This has been done to bring transparency in the system.

Nowhere in these rules, there is any restriction or condition to fix the fee and funds for the school. Every school is free to decide its internal as well as external economy. Courts have allowed schools to increase the rates to some extent to meet the rising cost of every thing.

In an ideal situation, the teacher: student ratio should be maintained at 1: 30. The tuition fee is charged to meet the following monthly expenses.

1                    Salary of teacher	*55%
2                    Electricity and water	6%
3                    Telephone and internet	2%
4                    Principal’s salary	7%
5                    Misc . expenditure	2%
6                    Office expenses	2%
7                    Non-teaching staff	2%
8                    Class Four Employees	2%
9                    Maintenance (including lawns, furniture, electric gadgets)	2%
10               Library (News papers etc.)	1%
11               Audio-visual aids.	1%
12               Stationery	2%

* Presuming that for a class of 30 students, there is on an average one teacher and CTC of the teacher comes around 16000/- per month.

If the monthly income is divided into various heads properly its 84% covers all the necessary expenses approximately. This does not include the rental value of the building used by the students.

This does not include the following:

1                    Medical emergencies

2                    Fire and Building Safety

3                    Land and Building repairs

4                    Depreciation

5                    Sports

6                    Co-curricular activities

7                    Tours – Travel

8                    Examination expenditure

9                    Computers and other electronic gadgets, like projectors, audio-visual system

10                  School Board expenditures (fee and funds etc.)

11                  Advertisement

12                  School laboratories (Science, Math, Language, Computers.)

13                  Development of Natural Resources.

14                  Misc. Exp.

For the above listed expenditure schools have to collect various funds like amalgamated funds and other annual charges. All funds are liabilities. They are not brought into account in school income.

Schools do not get any financial aid from the State or Central Government. They have to rely on their own resources and this they have to ensure the School board as a pre-condition to affiliation.  The Supreme Court has already directed the state governments to frame some regulations to bring the unrecognized schools under teaching shop regulations.

When you talk of facilities like spike free power supply, air cooling during summer, cooled drinking water, comfortable furniture, computers, audio-visual aids, sports and playground, schools have to incur extra expenditure to add these premium features. When you ask for English speaking environment, modern methods of instructions, quality learning, Science experiments, knowledge enriched library, activities, computer education, extra curricular activities like dancing, singing, painting, sculpture, swimming, self defense skills, theatre etc. schools have to provide these to the students for a cost. In certain cases the cost is very heavy. Extra staff has to be brought on roll to manage these facilities. The traditional schools books do not provide for such things.

Even NCERT books provide the minimum and mostly they don’t work with children. NCERT design its books on a common pattern and often these books are not appropriately worded. Once I found a book by NCERT for social sciences loaded with far fetched words. I complained about it to the Principal of the school but our discussions were not very fruitful. Another problem with NCERT books is that they are revised fairly enough. They are printed over and over again. This idea is very practical nowadays especially when knowledge is regularly updated all over the world. So in my opinion only those books are good which are revised and reprinted.

Moreover, NCERT does not get along with CBSE on various aspects of CCE. For CCE the teacher needs to organize the stuff on more creative lines and make room for certain activities in the class and outside to include both scholastic and co-scholastic areas of the students to assess the students for various CCE norms and values. Since NCERT takes into account a general view keeps itself contained in the academic premise. Eminent authors designing books for private publishers obviously take note of every thing try to produce easily customizable exercises and activities. That is why they consistently and constantly keep on revising the books. To some extent CBSE has taken over NCERT and started taking out its own books and instructional material.

Parents should cooperate with the school authorities to safeguard the learning environment and instructional material. Things may not be cheap but they are equally good and worth their while. If schools churn out profit, they make heavy investments to provide quality education and modern amenities. They have to keep themselves competitively ahead of others. Even they face a cut throat competition and have to maintain an edge lest they are sidelined by some big operator.