Idea is good, but implementation difficult

EDUCATION EQUALITY PART - II

Agencies concerned with education are watching with interest the fate of a public interest litigation filed in the Delhi High Court.

The outcome is expected to have a deep impact on the direction the Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2004 will take. The public interest litigation seeks the implementation of agreements which most schools make with state education departments, that of admitting a certain number of economically weaker students in return for land at subsidised rates.

The case, filed in 2002, had named 268 schools in Delhi, which had received land at subsidised rates from the government but had not fulfilled their part of the bargain.

Yesterday, the high court sent a notice to over 100 schools, including Mothers International School, Montfort School, and the Delhi Public School at East of Kailash, for not adhering to its order for reserving 25 per cent seats for children of the weaker sections of society.

Evidently, schools have been reluctant or are finding it difficult to implement the court's order.

The Delhi government, which held several consultations with schools in the Capital in order to evolve a system to accommodate students from the weaker sections, found that the issue raised strong passions.

School principals have been vocal in expressing their opinion that the integration of children from different class backgrounds is a good idea but it will be difficult to implement.

"How can you ensure that there is a level playing field when one child born to English-speaking parents goes home to a pucca house with air-conditioning and another goes home to a slum to illiterate parents?" said one principal during one of the three meetings held on the court order in the Delhi Secretariat.

But Ashok Agarwal, the lawyer who moved the public interest litigation, is not impressed by the concerns raised by the schools.

"First of all, admitting the students is a point of law. The schools got land since education is not strictly a profit oriented business," Agarwal said.

"Second, one only has to look at the report of the Kothari Commission on education to realise that all talk of neighbourhood schools is premised on the fact that all children, rich or poor, will go to same school," he added.

"The commission also says clearly that such integration is good not just for the children of poor parents but for children from privileged backgrounds as well.

"The fact that a child comes from a slum to school, forgoing an income which can help mitigate the poverty in his family, will have a positive impact on privileged children as well. They, too, will not take their status for granted," Agarwal said.