Nagpur: As the new academic session gets underway, private schools say they are facing a financial crunch due to non-payment of entire fees by government for admissions given under Right To Education (RTE) Act. Schools have warned about taking ‘strong steps’ if the state continued to delay payments this year as well.

Jagruti Dharmadhikari, Pune-based academician and founder-member of Independent English Schools Association (IESA) said, “Almost 2,000 schools have shut down this year due to no reimbursements being received. We will wait till August end or September as per RTE Government reimbursements rule. If nothing turns up, the first step will be to boycott admissions and we will not register our name in online process for next year. Majority of our schools have not received a single penny since 2013 and therefore it is very tough to run the school.”

Her colleague in the association, Jalna-based academician Rajendra Dayma said, “We have given a memorandum to education department in most of the districts of Marathwada as a one month warning to provide the complete reimbursements. If funds are not received, we will take out a non-corporation movement against the education department and will later go to court. The government should therefore fulfil its responsibility as clearly mentioned in the RTE Act.”

In Nagpur, the RTE application process received a good response which has frustrated participating schools even more. A city principal said, “The education department is pulling off a great fraud by forcing us to give admissions and making false promises regarding payment. Frankly I think they will never pay us anything and we will have to resort to increasing the fee for rest of the students.” Under RTE Act, schools have to reserve 25% of their seats and give free admissions to students. Admissions are given to students chosen by the education department through a lottery system. Schools submit bills twice a year to their local education department which in turn clears it and forwards to the head office.

Last week the education department completed its eight round of lottery for free school seats under Right to Education (RTE) Act last week, and yet over a thousand seats remain vacant. The total seats available this year under RTE are 7,415 but even after the academic session, only 6,021 have been taken up.

Verification of documents submitted by parents to qualify under the RTE quota is always a contentious issue. This year however, Nagpur division’s top education official Anil Pardhi directed schools not to demand any extra documents from parents. Pardhi’s letter came after reports that few schools in city were asking parents to submit an undertaking, ranging from an affidavit to plain letters, affirming the authenticity of address and income proofs submitted. Pardhi said, “If the school has any doubt over authenticity of these documents then they can directly get in touch with the authority that issued it. Students cannot be denied admission because they refuse to re-confirm the authenticity of documents.”