It’s a battle for survival for Delhi’s budget schools

Hundreds of Delhi’s budget schools in predominately migrant colonies and rural areas such as Hastal, Karawal Nagar, Sangam Vihar and Narela battle for survival as their fee collections drop by as much as 90% with thousands of students missing

New Delhi: Sanjay Aggarwal’s office desk is piled with notebooks, school diaries, uncollected report cards, and registers, one of which has a record of students who have paid September’s fee. “Our school has 573 students and only four non- EWS students paid last month,” says Aggarwal, manager of New SD Public, a middle school in Hastsal in Uttam Nagar, going through his fee register. EWS is short for economically weaker section.

Vedpal Memorial School in Uttam Nagar. The school management had to furlough several teachers due to fund crunch. (Biplov Bhuyan/HT PHOTO)

“We are a budget school and our fee ranges from Rs 700 to Rs 1,300, depending on the class, but almost all parents of our students say they cannot afford to pay. Our school is fighting for survival,” Aggarwal says.

Aggarwal’s school is not the only one. Hastsal, a census town in west Delhi, which has over 100 low-cost schools in a 6 sq km geographical area, represents a microcosm of the larger education crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the threat it poses to the survival of over 3,000 budget schools across the capital, which are mostly located in working class neighbourhoods and rural areas such as Karawal Nagar, Sangam Vihar and Narela.

With the pandemic and the lockdown hitting low- income groups hardest, their fee collection, the schools say, has gone down by as much as 90%. And as many as 30% of their children are “missing,” thousands of teachers have either lost their jobs, or have gone without pay since April. Many budget schools in Delhi (their average fee is Rs 800 for nursery and Rs 2,800 a month for class 12) which started coming up across the country after liberalisation in the 1990s have already shut down.

A recent report State of the Sector — Private Schools in India, by Central Square Foundation (CSF), a think tank, says in just 20 years, the share of India’s children going to government schools has dropped from 71% to 52%. Nearly half of school students in India attend private schools, with 70% of them paying monthly fees of less than Rs 1,000, while 45% pay less than Rs 500/month.

“ In the immediate aftermath of Covid -19, some of these children may shift to government schools. The lowest-fee schools may close and a large number of students may see their learning affected,” says the report.

‘No option’

At Vedpal Memorial Public School, another school in Hastsal, DP Sharma, the principal, sits in his room, painted pink, a collage of pictures of the school’s annual programmes adorning the wall behind him. These days, Sharma and his four teachers (14 others had to be furloughed) spend a lot of time calling up students for fees and for participating in online classes. The middle school charges Rs 800 for Class 8 and Rs 400 for nursery, and only 25 out of 400 children, Sharma says, paid the fee for September.

“We have no contact with about half of our students, most of whom seem to have returned to their native places. Their parents are poor, working as vendors and daily wagers, and unable to pay even our meagre fee. I cannot blame them,” says Sharma, who used to be a math teacher at one of the private senior secondary schools in the area before he ventured out on his own about 15 years back.

In the teachers’ room, Seema Majumdar, a science teacher, is checking answer sheets sent on WhatsApp. “Only about 50 children are able to take online classes; I hope the pandemic is soon over and these children are able to return to school; neither we nor our students have the means for any meaningful online education.”

Teaching staff at Vedpal Memorial School. The coronavirus pandemic is posing a threat to over 3,000 budget schools across Delhi. (Biplov Bhuyan/HT PHOTO)

Many of these schools, which market themselves as model, modern, convent , public , perhaps appealing to the lower middle class parents’ desire for private English medium schooling for their children, came up in the past two decades, and are now shutting down.

Among them is Hastsal’s AR Kiddz Way, a nursery school. “ I was dependent on the school for livelihood, and with no parents ready to pay fee I was left with no option,” says Mukesh Gupta, who started the school in 2014 and shut it in July this year. He has now rented out a portion of the school building in Hastsal to a garments shop, whose signboard has replaced that of the school at the front.

Not just junior schools, the area’s secondary and senior secondary schools too are in crisis. Ravinder Yadav, chairman of RP Memorial Senior Secondary Public School, which had 1,800 students before the pandemic, says that his school is seeing a massive exodus with over 200 students from various classes having already taken their school leaving certificates. The school, he adds, has no information about another 250 students. “Many parents of children leaving the school say they do not want their children to study anywhere this year and will resume studies next year,” says Yadav.

Bearing the brunt

Outside, at the school’s fee counter , there is a long queue of parents accompanied by their children to apply for school leaving certificates. One of them is Sharda Devi, whose son has passed 10th class exams this year. “ My husband has lost his job and we are going back to our native place in Bihar,” she says. Another parent, Rajiv Kumar, wishes to shift his children to a government school.

Things are no different in east Delhi’s Karawal Nagar , which has over 70 budget schools. Rakesh Bansal, chairman, Jeewan Jyoti Senior Secondary School, Karawal Nagar, says that only 25 percent of school’s 1000 students paid fee for September and only as many are able to attend online classes. “ Most people in this area belong to lower-income groups, which have born the maximum burnt of the pandemic. In fact , most of our children cannot take online classes as they do not have devices or space at home to do so. The school’s finances are under great stress.”

Budget school associations say regulations that require all schools to meet certain standards in terms of infrastructure, facilities, student-teacher ratio, teachers’ training and the Seventh Pay Commission, have made their survival more difficult during the pandemic. “ The government should categorise schools either on the basis of the fee or the area where they located. A budget school in Karawal Nagar can not be compared to an expensive school in south Delhi, whose fee is 10 times more than us, ” says Ashwani Sharma, who runs City Modern Public School, a middle school in Sadatpur in northeast Delhi. His school, he says, has no trace of 40% of the 600 students it had in March.

SD Public school in Uttam Nagar. A body of private schools has demanded that the government should provide vouchers to children studying in budget schools. (Biplov Bhuyan/HT PHOTO)

Many schools argue that if industries can be categories as micro, medium, small and are getting government support based on this categorization, the same can be done for schools. “ Unlike workers in industries, who will not work without pay, our teachers have no choice. How long can we go on like this? ” asks Hari Parkash Sharma, manager, New Happy Public School Narela and general secretary, Unaided Recognised Schools Welfare Association (URSWA),a body of budget schools in Delhi’s rural areas.

Chandrakant Singh, general secretary, Private Land Public Schools Trust, says the government, which spends roughly about Rs 6,000 a month on a child in its school, should provide education vouchers to children studying in budget schools, whose number is about 2,400 in Delhi. “It can directly transfer the money in the account of the parents at least till the time this crisis lasts, so that we can pay our teachers, ” says Singh. “I have been able to provide only ration support to my teachers,” says Singh, also a manager at Ideal Radiant Public School in Hastsal.

The education voucher system, says a senior official at deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia’s office, has been proposed by advocacy groups before. “But it won’t be a viable option in the present circumstances as the economy has been badly affected and the revenue collections are low. Though it varies from area to area, we have added enough classrooms over the years to accommodate all students coming to government schools,” added the official.

Parth Shah, president, Centre for Civil Society ( CCS), a Delhi-based think tank, which works in the area of education and livelihood, says budget schools have played a big role in raising literacy rates over the years. “The prevailing mindset within the government is that it is responsible for only government schools. But the fact is half of the children go to private schools and the government has an obligation towards them too, especially those studying in low-cost schools.”