School Education Saga-XIV: Cross-selling edn, coaching under fancy branded names continue unabated

Hyderabad: The government orders and proceedings to regulate the schools resorting to cross-selling education with coaching activity to exploit parents continue unabated in Telangana.

According to the Telangana School Education Department (TSED) sources, schools with names like “concept, brilliant, central, convent, creative, Digi, excellence, IIT, Hitech, International, Model, National, Planet, Olympiad, Techno, Talent, Smart, etc are banned long back.”

Several schools in Telangana continue to violate the rules issued by the GOMS No. 91 of the Education Department on August 6,2009. Besides, it violates Section 13 of the RTE Act, 2009. Besides, based on the Proceedings of the DSE on August 24, 2016, the state government has issued a memo No 8187/SE.Genl. I/2022 on June 25,2022, directing to take stringent action against the school having fancy names.

Dr Suresh Babu, State president of Praja Science Vedika, Hyderabad, pointed out that such coaching activity violates section 29 (Curriculum and evaluation procedure) of the RTE Act, 2009 and condition 9 of Form II, i.e., Recognition certificate from the District Educational Officer. Similarly, such fancy names as E-Techno, E-Olympiad, NEET, and JEE are banned by government orders.

As per the proceedings dated 24-08-2016 of the Director of School Education, Telangana State has identified 3,487 schools with 60 banned fancy names as far back as 24.8.2016. Also, the then State education secretary had reminded the officials to take action in her memo no 8187 on June 25, 2022.

Further, coaching is a commercial activity not covered by the term ‘education’ which is supposed to be a charitable activity enjoying IT exemption from the payment of Income Tax and in fact, claimed by all the educational institutions while filing their I.T. returns. As of now, the number would have grown to at least 5,000. The evidence for the 60 banned names and the out-of-syllabus textbooks without printing the price and sold without a receipt. These books contained the banned name labels of the schools located within the premises of each of the schools.

The miserable inaction for eight long years on such crass educational violators has had a deleterious effect on the health of school education, especially in the government sector which is denied a level-playing ground, leading to very low enrollment and heavy dropouts. This is obvious from the fact that there are about 4,000 schools below 10 students in the state of Telangana only.

The TSED and its district officials are responsible for granting permissions for new schools, upgrading existing schools and issuing NOCs for the affiliation to other boards.