Aided schools may be allowed to charge tuition fee from secondary and senior secondary students which would give sufficient leeway to them to promote school activities. At present even well-to-do and affluent parents are not paying any fees for the education of their wards. The Review Committee feels that aided schools may be allowed to charge tuition fee @ Rs.150/-per month from students of class IX onwards and science fund / music fund / home science fund from students of class XI onwards if they avail of the teaching under the relevant stream. The Managements may be allowed to use this tuition fee collection towards 5% share of the salary of teachers and other expenditure. (This has been dealt with in the recommendation relating to Section 17). They may also be allowed to levy Rs.200/- as admission fee from freshly admitted students who join from other schools after completing elementary education.
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The Pupil Fund may be revived which would enable the managements to conduct the annual function, publish a magazine and to take children on excursions. Such extracurricular activities are a necessary part of the learning process for children. In the absence of these pursuits, the children of Aided schools are deprived of many educational experiences which their counterparts in Government schools benefit from regularly.
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Electricity, water and fixed telephone charges account for a major share of expenditure incurred on the establishment. Being essential facilities, it is not possible to curtail expenditure on these essential services. If the expenditure is reimbursed an actual basis, it would ease the financial pressure on managements.
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Often it becomes necessary for Managements to arrange for teachers for teaching special subjects or for giving special coaching due to long absence of regular teachers or for other administrative reasons. For this no aid is admissible. Sometimes there is a need to provide amenities like fans, cool drinking water etc. for the children. Due to shortage of funds, the schools skirt doing anything and the children are denied essentials.
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Under Rule 1514 of DSEAR ‘73 Managements can levy development fund from children with the permission of the Director. Generally such requests are not entertained or are declined for fear of misuse of funds. It is recommended that whenever a genuine request is made by a management the school should be allowed to levy a development fund. Approvals need to be conveyed within 15 days and the designated officer should be delegated authority subject to guidelines which should be shared with the schools.* No doubt it would require monitoring on the part of the department and imposition of penalties if the funds are not used as claimed. In that case penalties can be imposed.
Oversight of Fund Management by Aided Schools •
Revamping of aided schools should not mean freedom from any checks. Accountability of managements would need oversight as 95% of the salary charges are paid by the Government.
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Government may restore the earlier practice of annual grants for purchase of science
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Delhi School Education Act and Rules, 1973, Report of the Review Committee
not government schools, the proposal to treat them as a separate entity distinct from unaided private schools and government schools should be considered, purely in the interest of delivering quality education. For any management to make running the school worth it has to break even and have some surplus to spend on innovation or sudden needs. Stopping all avenues of legitimately raising resources is counterproductive. The provisions which were in the DSEAR ‘73 need to be restored. Of course there have to be sufficient checks to prevent any commercialisation at the expense of the pupils and the answer lies in conducting random checks and levying of prompt penalties if there is mismanagement.