Supreme Court’s double whammy for elite schools

Recent judgements of the country’s apex court are being interpreted as a huge blow to the managements of one-five star schools which have sprung up all over the country. Dilip Thakore reports Despite the unanimously welcomed exit of Union minister of human resource development Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi who was hell-bent on rewriting history and social science textbooks to suit his mofussil predilections and superstitions, from Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi, the year 2004 has begun badly for the managements of India’s estimated 7,500 ‘public’ (i.e private, expensive, one-five star) schools. Across the country, an ominous current of apprehension is snaking through the usually well-furbished boardrooms of India’s most well regarded secondary institutions of learning. On January 20 the Delhi high court issued an order to the director of education of the Delhi state government to ensure that numerous privately promoted unaided schools in the national capital grant freeships and admit poor, under-privileged children equivalent to 25 percent of their enrollment into their classrooms, hitherto the exclusive preserve of the children of the capital’s rich and famous. In a historic judgement in a PIL (public interest litigation) caseSocial 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 region which had been allotted land (by DDA) at concessional prices on condition they reserve a 25 percent freeships quota for disadvantaged children, for breach of that condition. This was only the first of the setbacks experienced by the managements of Delhi’s top schools this year. On April 27 after hearing a PIL filed by the Delhi Abibhavak Mahasangh — a federation of parents associations — which alleged that 30 recognised schools in the capital had hiked their tuition fees unreasonably and were “indulging in large scale commercialisation of education”, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India heard several batched appeals against the director of education, the state and municipal governments by unaided schools alleging interference relating to tuition fees and maintenance of financial statements and accounts. In Modern School vs. Union of India & Ors a majority judgement of the apex court (Chief Justice V.N. Khare, S.H. Kapadia J with Justice S.B. Sinha dissenting) upheld the right of the director of education of the Delhi state government to regulate tuition fees chargeable by private unaided schools. The court also prohibited the transfer of fees, funds or surpluses of one school to another or to its parent trust or society though it permitted school managements to collect reasonable sums (upto 10-15 percent of tuition fees) for capital expenditure to be credited into a separate development fund. These two judgements (the Delhi high court’s reservations judgement of January 20 was endorsed by the Supreme Court) are being interpreted as a huge blow, particularly to the managements of the growing number of one-five star schools which have recently sprung up all over the country. Though promoters and managers of the new generation of…