Free education for EWS kids in private schools goes in Haryana

Geetanjali Gayatri
Chandigarh, March 30

The Haryana Government has withdrawn the facility of free education in private schools to the children of Economically Weaker Section by omitting Rule 134-A in the Haryana School Education Rules, 2003.

After a notification to this effect was issued, private schools across the state welcomed the move. They had been protesting against the facility on grounds that the parents were submitting fake income certificates to avail the benefit. However, the Education Department maintained that the rule had to be dropped since it was at variance with the Right to Education Act (RTE) of the Central government.

“Rule 134-A was a provision under the Haryana School Education Rules, which existed prior to the RTE. The new Act provides for 25 per cent benefit to the EWS, while Rule 134-A provided benefit of only 10 per cent. Since this was at variance with the Central Act, it

was dropped,” ACS (Higher Education) Anand Mohan Sharan, link officer for school education, said.

He said private schools would be reimbursed according to provisions in the Act that state that the Haryana Government would pay the private school according to its per child spending or school fee, whichever was less. This implies that the schools will now get reimbursement for the number of students studying as per rules.

The private schools, while not admitting students under Rule 134-A in the last academic session, had been demanding from the government that the pending Rs 1500 crore towards the beneficiaries be reimbursed to them or these students be shifted to government-run Sanskriti model schools.

“At a meeting, we even suggested that the government transfer the fee of the Sanskriti model schools directly into the accounts of the parents of these children through DBT and leave it to them to decide where they want to seek admission,” says Anil Kaushik of the private schools’ association.

Saying they pointed out that parents were using fake income certificates to seek admission under Rule 134-A, Kaushik said linking the data to the “Parivar Pehchan Patra” proved that only 4,100 of 49,000 admissions were genuine.