Picture used for representational purpose only

GANDHINAGAR: After making biometric attendance compulsory for government schools, the Gujarat government now plans to extend this system to all 15,000 private schools as well, including schools affiliated to ICSE , CBSE and other boards.

The move is likely to have a backlash from private schools. The state government is attempting to capitalise on the provisions of the RTE Act, where it can monitor the functioning of private schools. Key objective of this monitoring is to expose the dummy schools and shut them down.

According to sources, “There is great need to monitor the activities of the private schools as they mostly remain away from the state monitoring. It’s been observed that there are many dummy schools which just take money and exploit the resources. The state government is paying nearly Rs 300 crore per annum as the fees of around 3 lakh RTE (Right to Education) student. However, there is no monitoring of the quality of education given in these schools. On the contrary, it has been observed that many schools illegally take government grants for the dummy RTE students while the poor students study in government run schools but private schools using their documents just to take government money. Taking biometric presence of students and teachers in private schools will automatically expose these malpractices.’’

“All the private schools come under the FRC (fee regulation committee) Act. So to monitor the claims of the private schools to take higher fees that they employ foreigners as the teachers, Phd teachers, daily biometric is the need of the hour. Under Section 5 of RTE Act, the state is responsible to check the quality of education and content of education in all the schools which includes the private schools too. Hence the state government has planned to monitor the activities of 15,000 schools on a regular basis from October 2019,’’ sources added.

Source said, “A task force--with experts from the GCERT, the state boards, different boards, private educationist and representatives of the private schools--will finalise the modalities of the new monitoring system. The state government will form around 300 teams of experts to monitor the activities of the private schools and to implement the biometric student and teachers' presence from October.’’

