The ongoing crackdown on private schools across the 13 districts of the State is being viewed as a ploy to benefit corporate schools and government schools, by the management of the budget-sized private schools.
The government has set-up task force teams in each district to close down unrecognised schools. And across the State about 1,600 schools have been identified as unrecognised schools, with 144 in Visakhapatnam district alone.
Talking to The Hindu , chairman of Andhra Pradesh Private Schools Association (APPSA) K.S.N. Murthy said, “Private schools, especially the budget schools have been the backbone for education in the State. We have students from every sector right from the children of daily wage earners to children from middle class families. We fill the gap between the high-end corporate schools and the government-run schools, as we are open to all,” he said.
According to him there were about 22,000 private schools in the State about two years ago and it has now come down to 14,000.
Parameters
We agree that the nine parameters such as fire safety certificate, building structural certificate, traffic clearance and sanitary, as prescribed by the government are required, but they are difficult to get and one has to spend lakhs of rupees in the form of bribes to get them. And most importantly it is time consuming and the process is tedious. For a mid-size school it is a Herculean task, said Mr. Murthy.
According to him, in the crackdown the corporate schools that have a chain of schools will stand to gain.
Private schools cater to 60 per cent of the education needs. They provide education to over 1 crore students and employ over eight lakh teachers.
KSN Murthy
Chairman, AP Private Schools Association
Fresh recruitment of teachers not only gives us qualitative edge but the teacher student ratio in government school is now 1:20 which is better than the national norm of 1:30.
Ganta Srinivasa Rao
Minister for HRD
