EVEN AS ADMISSIONS HAVE BEGUN for the current academic year starting June/July, confusion about rules and regulations governing admission of tiny tots aged three-four years in Delhi’s estimated 6,600 composite private schools offering nursery education has not cleared despite a rain of legislation, litigation, clarification notifications and rules drawn up by the Delhi state government, courts and committees. In a major setback to private schools, on January 20 in Action Committee of Unaided Recognised Private Schools vs. Lt. Governor & Ors. (W.P.(C)177/2014), the Delhi high court dismissed a writ seeking a stay of the lieutenant governor’s nursery admission guidelines of December 18 which abolished a 20 percent discretionary admission quota of institutional managements.

The stand-off between the Delhi state government and composite private schools dates back to 2002, when in a PIL (public interest litigation) Social Jurist vs. Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi & Ors. (CW No.3156 of 2002), the court ordered the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to take “appropriate action” against 265 “recognised, private unaided” schools in the Delhi NCR (national capital region) which had been allotted land (by DDA) at concessional prices on condition they reserve a 25 percent free-of-charge quota for socio-economically disadvantaged children in their neighbourhoods. This victory prompted Social Jurist and other NGOs to file successful PILs which resulted in incremental government control over admission age, tuition fees (Modern School vs.Union of India & Ors), and prohibition of parent or child interviews for nursery admissions. (NB: The Delhi state government’s rules and regulations and high court judgements are inapplicable to independent, stand-alone preschools).

“Abolishing the small 20 percent management quota in nursery education could well be the last straw. Private school promoters have invested heavily in their nurseries and kindergartens. But with their administrative autonomy over nurseries completely eroded, they may well start shutting them down. This will make life very difficult for Delhi’s middle class,” warns R.C. Jain, president of the Delhi State Public Schools Management Association (estb. 1992) which has a membership of 800 institutions.

Even establishment educationists with experience in the Central and state government education ministries are waking to the dangers of the licence-permit-quota regimen migrating from industry into education. “Good schools in Delhi offering composite K-12 education are few and far between, and excessive regulation is likely to dishearten current and future promoters from offering nursery schooling. School managements should be given some measure of autonomy and flexibility. Most government schools don’t offer nursery education and the handful who do, have few takers, particularly within the middle class,” says Ashok Ganguly, former chairman of CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) — the country’s largest pan-India school-leaving examination board promoted and governed by the Union human resource development ministry.  

With wisdom about the ill-effects of excessive regulation of private education beginning to dawn upon the educators’ community, it’s high time parents who clamour for government intervention and regulation of private schools also start reading the writing on the wall.

Garima Upadhyay (Delhi)

Forced cooperation

Uncertainty and confusion continue to surround the issue of the regulatory status of the University Grants Commission (UGC) vis-à-vis 12,000 institutes offering technical education (engineering, business, hospitality, fashion design etc) across the country.

In a Supreme Court judgement of last April — Association of Managements of Private Colleges vs. All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) & Ors. (Civil Appeal No.1145 of 2004) and Adaikalamath College Etc. vs. All India Council for Technical Education & Ors. (Civil Appeal Nos.5736-5745 of 2004) — a 26-year-old arrangement under which AICTE accredited, supervised and regulated all institutions of technical educationcountrywide was ruled invalid. The court ruled that technical colleges and institutes affiliated with universities are beyond the regulatory purview of AICTE and should be governed by their parent universities under the provisions of the UGC Act, 1956. AICTE’s role is of an advisor to UGC in matters related to technical education, ordered a two-judge bench of the apex court. A curative petition filed by AICTE was dismissed on July 23.

Accordingly on December 3, UGC issued draft guidelines for technical education institutions to register with it for approval of new courses, intake capacity, dual programmes etc. However following a storm of protest that the time given was too short, on December 23, UGC placed a ‘revised’ draft of the guidelines — the UGC Approval of Colleges Offering Technical Education by Universities Regulation, 2013 — on its website and gave stakeholders and the public time till December 30 to convey their suggestions and comments.

The Supreme Court’s judgement and UGC guidelines have upset the great majority of the country’s 8,500 AICTE-approved technical education colleges/institutes, whose managements believe UGC lacks the experience or bandwidth to regulate technical institutes in addition to the country’s 700 universities and their 30,000 affiliated colleges. They fear chaos, arbitrariness and corruption.

Meanwhile on January 17, autonomous B-schools unaffiliated with any university which offer postgraduate diplomas in management (PGDM) programmes heaved a sigh of relief after the Supreme Court confirmed that its April 25 judgement is not applicable to them. Ruling on a writ petition filed by Delhi-based Education Promotion Society for India (EPSI), the court issued an interim order that AICTE will continue to be the regulatory body for PGDM institutions. “AICTE will be regulating the PGDM institutions for the year 2014-15,” ruled the court.

“We are happy that the great majority of B-schools remain under AICTE jurisdiction. The expertise developed by AICTE over 23 years is difficult for UGC to replicate suddenly. The UGC guidelines are a copy-paste of the e-governance manual issued by AICTE last year. I have served in AICTE as well as in technical education institutions for more than three decades and my prediction is that UGC will make a mess of administering technical institutions,” says Dr. Harish Chandra Chaturvedi, director of Birla Institute of Management & Technology, Noida, and alternate president of EPSI, who is spearheading the efforts of private institutions in settling the regulatory issue with government.

However, Prof. Durg Singh Chauhan, secretary general of the Association of Indian Universities and vice chancellor of GLA University, believes that in effect the status quo will be maintained for the foreseeable future and that AICTE will continue to play a major role in administering and regulating technical institutions in higher education. “In any case, the chairman of AICTE is a board member of UGC and AICTE’s advisory role is acknowledged in the Supreme Court judgement. In effect, UGC will rely on AICTE’s expertise for a long time,” says Chauhan.

Yet the beneficial fallout of the apex court’s judgement is that it will force UGC and AICTE which were often at war with each other, to cooperate. That can’t be bad for India’s beleaguered institutions of higher education.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)