Parents of all the 280 students of National English Primary & High School are looking for other educational institutions to admit their wards from the next academic year. The chairman of the school, Dominic Lobo, has announced that the school will have to be shut down due to the non-payment of funds from state government under the Right to Education (RTE) policy.“It has been five years that the RTE policy has been implemented in my school and I have admitted more than 35 students under the policy. The state government has not paid a single penny to our school and we are running with arrears to the tune of Rs 20 lakh,” said Lobo.“If we continue admitting students under the RTE scheme, the school will be more burdened and it might be difficult for us to keep it running in future,” he said. “It is difficult to run the school and pay teachers on a monthly basis. I feel like committing suicide sometimes as I have to handle the pressure on a daily basis.”While the 30-year-old school located in Sangam Nagar, Old Sanghvi, has been waiting for the state government to release the funds under RTE policy for quite a while, it is by no means the only institution complaining about the failed RTE policy. Eighty-seven schools under the Independent English Schools Association (IESA) are facing the same problem.Tired with the RTE policy and the sustained non-payment of funds under it, all IESA schools have taken a stand that they will not admit any students under RTE policy in the coming academic year.The association comprises almost 800 schools across the state and claims that the total state government dues have piled up to more than Rs 900 crore.Rajendra Singh, secretary of the association, said, “We approached the high court bench at Aurangabad through a writ petition on February 5 describing our situation and the court has accepted our plea and gave an interim order that no coercive action should be taken against schools who do not admit RTE students for 2018-19.”The Federation of Schools Association in Maharashtra that includes IESA, Private Unaided Schools Management Association (PUSMA) and the Unaided Schools Forum (USF) have taken a collective decision not to admit new students in the next academic year under RTE.The state government is, however, claiming that the amount pending disbursement is nowhere close to the Rs 900 crore that the schools have claimed. It has countered the association claims saying the total pending amount is Rs 300 crore out of which around Rs 150 crore has already been disbursed to the association. The association has stuck to its guns saying that the state government needs to pay a total of Rs 953.11crore out of which they have received Rs 154 crore.“Since the RTE policy came into existence since 2012-13, we have diligently admitted students under RTE policy but have not received the promised funds from state government regularly. To take a serious action against the same, this year we approached court and thankfully we have received a positive start from the court too,” Singh informed,Even as the federation has decided not to admit any new students under RTE, this decision will not have an impact on students already taken in and have been studying in various schools for the past five years, clarified Singh.“We understand the importance of RTE and would like to implement the policy in future too as it helps the underprivileged students in the state to get better education. But if the state government denies us payment, it will be difficult for the schools to sustain in future,” added Singh.While the difference in the amount stated by the state government and the association is approximately of Rs 806 crore, the state government is still firm that the funds pending for the association is only Rs 148 crore.Sharad Gosavi, the deputy director of the state primary education department, said, “The state government needs to pay Rs 148 crore for the year 2016-17 and we will pay it eventually. An amount of Rs 154 crore has already been disbursed. The Rs 900 crore figure, which has been claimed by the association, seems baseless.”He further added, “We have also received a complaint against the school which is going to be shut down and we will surely look into the matter.”