Despite ban, dummy schools flourish

Sukhwinder Pal Sodhi

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 18

Dummy schools continue to flourish in the city, despite the CBSE guidelines, as they allow lean attendance to students enrolled in these schools and they continue to prepare for competitive exams. The beneficiaries include children of senior bureaucrats of Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana.

The Education Department has failed to monitor the children studying at private coaching institutes during school hours.

Above all, the tracking system which was being worked upon by the Education Department to keep a close tab on the attendance at the dummy schools also failed to yield any result.

Sources revealed that children of various officials are studying at schools in Sectors 35, 37 and 28. They do not attend the schools but their attendance is completed and these schools are admitting dummy students for their profits.

The Education Department with the help of Society for Promotion of IT in Chandigarh (SPIC) was to launch an attendance tracking system in June. Under the system, all city schools had to upload the attendance of the students of Classes XI and XII on the portal providing accessibility to the Director Public Instructions (Schools) to track the attendance of any school and can also analyze the number of students meeting the 75 per cent attendance criteria .The system was meant to plug gaps in the attendance tracking system and to access the online attendance data of the schools, yet it failed to take off due to the careless attitude of the Education Department. The software has been installed at five schools during the pilot project but access and connectivity to the main server has still not been given and the system is not functional till date.

CBSE had issued circulars to schools to maintain and keep attendance records. Chandigarh Administration had also warned the private coaching centers in February to start classes after the school hours so that the students don’t miss classes at schools. As per the guidelines issued by the Chandigarh Administration, the Education Department had to check the coaching centers regularly to ensure that students dont attend classes during school hours but nothing has been done so far. The practice of students attending classes at coaching institutes goes on and they continue to miss classes at school.

Sarabjit Singh, Education Secretary, said he was not aware about the children of officials studying at dummy schools but the department will enquire the things very soon. The attendance tracking system will also be put in effect soon.

CBSE regional officer RK Khanderao said last month many schools were checked and strict action was taken against two schools. Surprise checks will be done conducted soon.