Hi, The menace of donations to schools for admitting wards and the irregularities thereto has assumed massive proportions. The Director of Education has belatedly woken up to the fact, after a group of Margao parents demonstrated, that private schools have been operating for years without an approved fee structure. This has now been remedied partly, but the obnoxious donations have not been entirely eliminated. After all, which school gives receipts for donations? And which parent would publicly admit that she/he has been taken for a ride?
Though things have been made a tad tougher for private schools to make illegal profits, what about grant aided schools? Though most fees are state subsidized, however ample opportunities present themselves for the unscrupulous to make money at the cost of hapless students. Let me cite a few examples. When the academic year starts, that is the time when parents are most taxed. To start with, many schools –'reputed' ones at that - insist that the school uniforms be stitched at a particular tailor's establishment under the pretext that the colour, texture and style of the uniform is thus standardized. Undoubtedly, the concerned tailor overcharges and a nice commission finds its way to the school management. Then there are other expenses – School Calendar/diary, Journals, Work books, examination fees (imposed by most schools without sanction), excursion fee, PTA membership, etc. These vary from school depending on the appetites of the concerned managements. This is just the gamut of 'regular' charges that the parent has to bear. In addition, certain schools have "canteens" where the students bring from home vegetables, oil, sugar, and other items. Some enthusiastic PTA members prepare eatables - bajji, batatawadas and the like and the students are then induced to patronize these canteens. Other sources of 'illegal' income consist of lotteries, school magazine charges, advertisements for the magazine – here parents feel obliged to contribute as they feel that the child will not do well if they do not advertise - purchase of wall calendars with pictures of the school, fetes where children are coerced to donate in cash or kind, etc. Sometimes there is collaboration with third party agencies to provide classes in say mental arithmetic, or personality development, or some other allied activity. Here the school management gets a cut on the fees. My objection to these third party classes is that in the first place, these activities should, as a matter of course, be a part of the school programme. At one time when my daughter was in school, such activities were being held almost every other week and proved to be quite an irritant. The DoE needs to take a fresh look at the activities of schools so that illegal and indirect dontations are also curbed. As a post script let me add, that once when I was in the Chambers of Anil Powar, we nearly caught the relative of a South Goa strongman accepting a huge sum of money from a parent as a donation ostensibly to pay the DE officials. But that's a story for another day and another time! -- Tony de Sa Ph: +91 832 2470148 E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] M: +91 9975 162 897 ----------------------------------------------------------- I discovered that I have choices though sometimes its only a choice of attitudes. ------------------------------------------------------------
