Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada   

State against commercialisation of education, says Minister

PHOTO: RAJU V

Reaching out: Minister for Secondary Education D. Manikya Varaprasad interacts with students of municipal corporation elementary school at Ajit Singh Nagar in Vijayawada on Wednesday. —

VIJAYAWADA: Minister for Secondary Education Dokka Manikya Varaprasad on Wednesday allayed apprehensions of private schools and tutorials against any possible crackdown on the institutions as part of the government’s decision to rein in private educational institutions.

Addressing a felicitation meeting organised by the Vijayawada Children’s School and Tutorials Association, the Minister clarified that the main objective of constituting a committee to look into the fee structure of private educational institutions was to make quality education accessible to all sections of society.

He said a few institutions in the corporate sector were collecting exorbitant fee from students. After the bursting of the real estate bubble, a few individuals started investing money in the education sector and, in order to get good returns, they had been charging high fee.

“We are against commercialisation of education. It is the moral responsibility of the government to respond to the hapless parents’ woes. There hasn’t been any protest against tutorial system and we don’t intend to trouble institutions that came into existence due to hard work and commitment of individuals,” he announced amidst loud applause.

Mr. Varaprasad invited suggestions from private schools on measures to strengthen the education system.

“We need your support to make the ‘vidya yagnam’ initiated by the government a grand success,” he appealed.

Earlier, participating in a programme organised at a municipal school in Prakash Nagar at Ajit Singh Nagar as part of Badi Baata, Mr. Varaprasad claimed that the government had accorded top priority to the education sector. As part of its drive to improve facilities in the State-run schools on a par with the corporate institutions, it had allocated adequate funds for the development of infrastructure, besides filling vacant teacher posts. For the first time this year, as many as 52,000 vacant teacher posts had been filled across the State, he said, pointing out that the corporation-run schools had secured an impressive 87 per cent pass percentage.

He said the exercise of teachers’ transfers would be completed by July 16 after which the focus would shift on enhancement of the teaching pattern in the classroom.

Vijayawada Central MLA Malladi Vishnu, MLC Ilapuram Venkaiah, local corporator Ch. Baburao, former Mayor Mallika Begum and others were also present.

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