Editorial

If state-run educational institutions I across India hove become a tragic travesty, many privately-owned teaching shops mushroomed to fill the lacunae of learning ore no better. In fact, the latter exploit more by charging exorbitant fees. Badly shaken by the ever Increasing criticism of tutorial Institutes as schools for scandal, the Maharashtra Govt. is trying to regularise the coaching institutes run in overcrowded cubicles or cramped classrooms. In the past these hove been embroiled in countless controversies about leaked papers, rigged examinations and misleading publicity. A recent rule that college teachers cannot simultaneously be attached to colleges and coaching institutes has flopped due  to lack of implementation. Those caught playing a double role decided to leave the cash-starved colleges for the ignoble but more lucrative option. The recent ordinance that insists that coaching institutes register themselves, also enforces 19 conditions including a strict fee structure. This has made coaching class proprietors rise up in arms who assert that they as service' providers enjoy a constitutional right to fix their price. However, it does raise many vital questions on the financing of education, Now, a strange dichotomy prevails in the educational system: the established structure with its strict rules and ridiculous fee ceilings perpetually starved of funds and infrastructure, and the well-knit parallel system evading all attempts at disciplining. All agree that schools and colleges should be run by trusts for greater public good, and the coaching industry is motivated by monetary gain. Hence the government has valid reasons for keeping the fees low and trying to prevent a caste System in education. In the present scenario, well-to-do parents, instead of paying realistic school fees, readily pay huge sums to coaching institutes and tutors. Meanwhile the child from the chawl has to make do with ill-equipped classrooms and laboratories and disinterested teachers’.

Parents hove often shown their willingness to pay for good, sound education. The money thus collected should be rightly channelled into the main stream educational system and revamp its various aspects through carefully executed plans for greater good.