NASHIK: The Maharashtra English Medium School Trustees Association, during its first convention in the city on Tuesday, decided not to give admission under the 25% reservation of the Right to Education Act until the government reimburses the fees of the last three years.

The association also passed a resolution of not giving admission to children in the pre-primary section under the RTE .

In the convention held on Tuesday, 73 trustees became members of the association and Prince Shinde was appointed the district president.

The Aurangabad-based Association has 8,000 English educational institutions as members. There are around 24,000 English schools in the district. On April 12, they will be meeting at Nanded where the government resolution will be burnt as a mark of protest in front of the zilla parishad and they will also decide a date to hold a state-wide strike.

“The government is misleading the students, the poor people and the educational institutions because the 25% reservation under the RTE 2009 mentions admission to students in pre-primary and standard I but pre-primary does not have the approval of the government. RTE 2009 includes compulsory and free education to all children from six years to 14 years. On May 14, 2012, the government said that it would not reimburse the fees for those three years for pre-primary. But for the past three years we have been giving fee education but have not been reimbursed,” founder-president of the association Sanjayrao Tayade Patil said.

He said the government would reimburse for admissions from standard I onwards but there was no provision for it in the budget and no budgetary heads were made. “They made the budgetary heads only in 2013 and in 2014 decided the amount to be given to the schools. Accordingly, for each student, Rs 14,600 will be reimbursed per year by the government. We have spent money on the conveyance, uniforms, shoes and study material of the students, which alone amounts to Rs 14,000. But we have not been reimbursed with even the tuition fees,” said Patil.

He said that on the one hand the government was spending Rs 60,000-Rs 70,000 for the zilla parishad schools but quality education was not being imparted.

“Students, who have to be given admission in Class I will not know English; we will have to teach them from the scratch. On the other hand, class I students of our school will already be way ahead of their counterparts. The government says that we should conduct extra classes for the weaker ones. We have decided that we will not give admission to the students under the 25% reservation till we get reimbursed. We have no problem giving free education to the needy but are against the government’s policies,” said Patil.

“On April 12, we will hold a convention of the schools and decide the date for a common strike throughout the state. We will be burning the government resolution in front of the zilla parishad as a mark of protest,” said Patil.

