Eight months after the Karnataka state government notified the state Rules for the implementation of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (aka RTE Act), it is still floundering in troubled waters. The state’s 13,527 primary/higher primary private schools, which as per s.12 (1) (c) of the Act are obliged to admit 25 percent of children in class I or preschool if any, from among poor and socially disadvantaged children in their neighbourhood, are up in arms against the BJP government’s “inefficient and tardy” interpretation of the quota provision, which came into force statewide last June.

On December 27, the Karnataka Unaided Schools Joint Action Committee (KUSJAC), an umbrella organisation representing 16,000 private unaided primary-secondary schools, submitted an ultimatum to the state government demanding clarity on the quota provision of the RTE Act. KUSJAC’s main demand is immediate reimbursement of the expense incurred by private unaided schools for tuition dispensed to quota students admitted in June 2012. Under s.12 (2) of the RTE Act, the state government is obliged to reimburse tuition fees “to the extent of per-child expenditure incurred by the State, or the actual amount charged from the child, whichever is less”.

Earlier in May, the state government had finalised Rs.11,848 per year per student as the reimbursement fee payable by it to private schools. But nine months later and three months from the end of the 2012-13 academic year, none of the state’s private unaided schools which admitted quota students have received even the first of two installments promised.

“The reimbursement aggregating a substantial Rs.65 crore for the first year has not yet been released by the state government. Many schools are finding it difficult to enroll RTE quota students for the next academic year without having received the first year’s reimbursement. Apathy on the part of the government has pushed all private schools to the wall,’’ says L.R. Shiva-rame Gowda, president of KUSJAC.

Likewise the Karnataka State Private School Managements’ Federation (KSPSMF), which represents the interest of 800 private unaided schools, is also on the warpath. Its member schools are particularly incensed that households with upto Rs.3.5 lakh annual income have been defined as ‘poor’ by the state government’s RTE Rules. “By defining households with incomes of Rs.3.5 lakh per year as poor, the state government has made a mockery of this provision. Other states such as Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have set the household income limit for RTE quota students at Rs.40,000 and Rs.60,000 respectively. Karnataka’s Rs.3.5 lakh limit is an attempt by the government to corner all the RTE quota students for its employees and the middle class. We demand that this Rs.3.5 lakh limit is drastically reduced immediately. Moreover private school managements want protection from undue harassment by government officials and organisations demanding admission under the RTE quota,” says Sudi Suresh, secretary of KSPSMF.

While the state government is yet to respond to the demand for reclassification of poor households, the education department has assured private schools that the first tuition fee reimbursement installment will be paid in January and the second by end March. According to primary education minister Vishveshwara Hegde Kageri, the delay is due to the Central government’s failure to respond positively to repeated appeals by the state to help with the reimbursement. Under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, which is now subsumed by the RTE Act, the implementation expenditure is to be shared between the Central and state governments in the ratio 68:32.

Meanwhile even as 16,000 private schools banded under KUSJAC and KSPSMF have served notice to the state government to respond to their demands by January 15, the education department has invited RTE quota applications for admission into private schools for the academic year 2013-14 starting in June/July. But with private schools refusing to admit quota students for the next year until their dues for the academic year 2012-13 are cleared, and the government meets its household income ceiling revision and other demands, a stalemate has been reached. United under powerful representative associations, unaided school managements are determined to “explore all possible actions, including closing down of schools in the absence of any resolution” of their grievances.

Private schools in Karnataka, which host 32 percent of the state’s 8.4 million primary school children, aren’t the soft targets they were in the past. A prolonged and bitter war which won’t have any winners — least of all children — may be brewing.

Summiya Yasmeen (Bangalore)