School Admission Mess
Every year as the mad rush for admission to 'good schools' in the city makes news, the dailies run editorials, the public mind is exercised and ideas get thrown up for an early redressal of the situation. Then, as the dusts settle, nobody sees anything on the table, not even pious resolutions one gets to see on other issues. That is because unfortunately on the seminarial circuit school admission problems are the remotest from the minds of organisers and sponsors who feel preoccupied by other weighty passions of their own. And politicians? Well, the subject has never appealed to them. If it had, one would have had it included in one's party manifesto in the first place, to say nothing of this subsequently figuring in the speeches of important political figures as a burning matter of public interest.
We strongly urge that problems associated with admission to city schools be addressed on a durable footing with the right kind of vision.
The objective condition is like a double-edged sword cutting at both ends of school admission: there is paucity in the number of schools and yet those are there do not present any uniformity of standard in terms of curricula, equipment or teaching. So, there are certain concentric circles of preferred schools which themselves are ironically on a sort of decline. Their space, equipment base, teaching strength have neither been expanded nor updated in keeping with the requirement of an ever increasing number of new entrants to the school stream. The government has to come in a big way there by opening new schools, raising the standard of the existing ones and having them introduce shifts to accommodate the newcomers.
If the fees at the existing private schools, particularly of the English-medium variety, seem forbidding, the newer ones in this genre are coming up with a still higher cost curve. Sometimes new elements of expenditure are added to the known heads as the academic session winds down getting original parental calculations crossed in the process. But not always are these additional charges reflected on any discernible improvement effected in any particular area of school education, curricular or otherwise, for which, apparently, the money would be collected. Those who put their children to such schools at a high premium deserve their money's worth through their accountable performance.
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