A total of 331 nursery, primary and play schools in Chennai have been functioning without obtaining proper recognition from the State government and without a No Objection Certificate (NOC).
Chennai Collector A. Shanmugasundaram released the list of the schools without recognition on Monday and cautioned parents against admitting their children in these schools.
According to the Right to Education (RTE) Act 2009, all schools in the State should compulsorily have recognition from the State government. The schools should also get a building stability and fire safety certificates as well as an NOC from the local bodies and the Health Department.
The list includes several play schools which have grown in numbers over the last few years in the city as well as private nursery and primary schools.
The Collector has cautioned parents against admitting their children into these schools and has warned such schools that legal action will be initiated.
In a statement, the Collector said that checks had been carried out by block level and district level officials from the Education Department to check whether the schools were functioning with proper recognition. In May, a similar list of around 25 schools with high and higher secondary classes, which had been functioning without proper recognition in Chennai, was released.
“The schools have already been informed of the fact that they cannot function without recognition and during inspection, when they were found to not have the necessary certificates, they had also been issued a show cause notice. Despite this, some schools have continued functioning and we need to take the future of these students into consideration,” Mr Shanmugasundaram said.
An senior official from the School Education department said that several play schools in the city started off as creches functioning out of homes and then began to function as play schools.
“Many of these schools were operating out of small houses or even rooms in larger buildings and after the release of the rules for regulation of play schools in 2015, it was found that several of them do not meet the basic norms required to obtain a recognition from the State,” he said.
In April this year, the School Education department had called for a comprehensive check to be carried out by officials in each district as to whether all private schools across various boards in their jurisdiction were functioning with recognition. They had also been instructed to prepare a detailed list of these schools with their recognition status.
