NISA challenges the per pupil expenditure of Uttar Pradesh
New Delhi: The largest congregation of budget private schools in India, National Independent Schools Alliance (NISA) has filed a writ petition in Supreme Court of India seeking clarity in Uttar Pradesh per pupil expenditure declared as per Section 12(2) of RTE Act, 2009 read with Rule 8(2) of Uttar Pradesh RTE Rules 2011. The petition no 887/2018 was called on for hearing in front of Hon’ble judges Mr Justice S A Bobde and Mr Justice L Nageswara Rao.
Elaborating on the petition, the national president of the alliance, Shri Kulbhushan Sharma claimed that the Right to Education Act is a political fraud and NISA has been regularly advocating for its reform, but no political party has heeded it yet. A few states like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu have revised the per pupil expenditure (PPE) while other states continue to struggle and fight the flawed system. The lack of a clear calculating mechanism to derive at the stated per-pupil expenditure of the states is grossly missing. Secondly, this non-transparency creates misunderstandings between parents and school management. The parents are not aware of the non-re-imbursement of EWS category expenses by the government, which inadvertently leads to the schools hiking the fees of general category students, to meet their ends, while continuing to provide quality education.
The Uttar Pradesh Government fixed PPE at Rs 450 in 2011, no revisions to which have been made in the last 7 years. This oversight of the government is a gargantuan problem in our education system. This is completely against the Right to Education Act and against the child rights where the Uttar Pradesh and Central government both, are not ready to accept any reforms in education. NISA plans to file a writ petition in each and every state of this country to bring the transparency in the system, seeking the method of arriving each state’s per child expenditure, to ensure the education of each child of the country.
We also demanded that the Supreme Court issues an order specifying that no private schools will give admission under Section 12(1)(C) until they disclose/declare and revise the existing per pupil expenditure and pay arrears of reimbursement to all unaided schools in lieu of admission made by them under section 12 (1)(c)
Advocate Mr Ravi Prakash Gupta said that we have requested the Hon’ble Supreme Court to immediately direct the Uttar Pradesh Government to share the calculating mechanism of arriving at Rs 450 per pupil expenditure. We request the court to issue the direction to Director of Education of Uttar Pradesh to disclose/declare per pupil expenditure as per Section 12(2) of RTE Act 2009 along with issuing a notice to Director of Education, District Basic Education Officer and its officials to stop sending names of students under section 12(1)(c) of RTE Act, 2009 till per pupil expenditure is declared as per Section 12(2) of RTE Act, 2009 read with Rule 8(2) of UP RTE Rules, 2011.