Govt.Secondary School, Golyawas

Importance of Government Schools in IndiannWhy do private schools, which are known as public schools in India, attract a large number of parents to send their wards to these schools? We need to go deep into this aspect of education in our country particularly because Article 45 of the constitution of India puts the onus of providing free and compulsory education up to the age of 14 on the state government and the central government which run government (state) schools in states and territories under the direct rule of the central government.nnFailure of government, run schools to attract students and to stop them from dropping out means that the government will never succeed in fulfilling its obligation under Article 45 and education to all children up to the age of 14 will always remain a dream as it has remained even after 55 years of attaining freedom. Public schools cannot be expected to fulfill this aim as they are out of the reach of the general public even in metropolitan cities, not to speak of the deep and far-flung areas of rural India where large sections of our society still fail to see the face of a primary school. Admissions for KG and Nursery standards start with donation or payment under the table…. amounts varying from ten thousand to one lakh and fifty thousand depending on the name and fame of the public school to which parents want to get their wards admitted. These schools charge heavy fees combined with compulsory purchases of uniforms, books and stationary from stores which are run by these schools themselves or from pre-arranged stores.nnExcept for board classes, these schools fix their own syllabi and prescribe their own books. Most of these books are those in which someone from a particular school has contributed as a writer and is invariably priced very high.nnHowever, if a child does not end up getting through the class at the end of the year, the parents are called and offered a ‘pass’ certificate, along with an appropriate marks-statement for their children so that they can take their wards to some other school, which invariably is a government school. Thus those not doing well are weaned away, and extra payment-seats are created for new students to be admitted. Thousands of students with such (actually) fake certificates of these financially unaided by the state but recognized schools are fully valid for joining any school. Of course, some of the best students of government schools, whose parents feel that they should do something more for their talented children, shift to “public” schools every year. This continuous churning process ensures supply of better students, of course with better resources, to public schools and also impoverishing the already poor government schools. The net result is that there is a wide difference between their Board results. The different social strata to which the students of the two categories of schools belong is never taken into consideration while comparing their result, nor does anybody care about the abysmal difference in amenities available to the two categories of students