Visakhapatnam: Closure of aided schools draws severe flak

Visakhapatnam: The State government's decision to discontinue the financial aid to aided private schools across Andhra Pradesh mounts pressure on the educational department.

Though the willing letters were submitted to the department concerned expressing the willingness of the aided school managements to go for the closure, the move has taken a new twist.

Opposing the decision, a large scale of protest erupted in Visakhapatnam and it is eventually spreading across the districts.

While several students and parents in Visakhapatnam took to streets to protest against the closure of Sacred Heart Girls Aided High School and St Peter's High School in Gnanapuram, students and parents in Kakinada had hit the road to raise their voice against the government's decision a day later.

Despite the local MLAs trying to pacify the agitators gathered at the campus, the protests continued for hours. In Visakhapatnam, parents surrounded MLA Vasupalli Ganesh Kumar demanding the continuance of the school. Similarly, in Kakinada, YSRCP MLA D Chandra Sekhar Reddy was questioned by the parents. Similar protests are likely to occur in other parts of the State in the coming days.

The Department of Education received separate letters from the aided school managements who were willing to handover assets of the school as well as teaching and non-teaching staff to it, while a few schools volunteered to surrender the staff alone.

With the aid going to come to a halt, many school managements preferred to close the aided schools rather than gearing up to pay salaries to the staff and collect higher fee from the students to manage expenses.

Apparently, the move did not go down well among the parents as their wards were getting quality education at low fees in these institutions. "We don't want any schemes related to education such as Jagananna Vidya Kanuka, Amma Vodi. We appeal earnestly to the government to let our wards continue in the same institution as they did earlier," demands P Vijaya Lakshmi, a parent at Gnanapuram.

Currently, there are 40 primary, 24 secondary and nine upper primary schools in Visakhapatnam that fall under aided management with a strength of 14,000 students.

About 75 per cent vacancies for government sanctioned teacher posts exist in aided schools in the district.

Sharing his views on the move, Telugu Nadu Students' Federation state president MV Pranav Gopal mentioned that the future of the students is now hanging in a balance. "What is required now is not closure of the aided schools in the State but closure of the liquor shops and cultivation of ganja," he stresses.

With protests growing intense with each passing day, the department officials are suggesting the aided school managements to resubmit letters asking to continue the aided institutions, an official shares.