Former Gujarat chief minister Suresh Mehta today came down heavily on the BJP government in the state for allowing "rampant" privatisation of education.
Mehta, who was chief minister in 1995-96 and who quit the BJP in 2007, said the quality of education in government-run schools has deteriorated.
"More and more privatisation has been the BJP government's policy as it considers education a business. Even at government colleges and universities there are many self-financed subjects, which deprives poor students of quality education," he said, speaking to reporters here.
"The government is not filling up vacant posts of teachers, there are 16,000 vacant posts in primary schools and 10,000 in secondary schools," he claimed.
The government helped self-financed (private) universities and institutes by giving them land at low rates, he alleged.
Out of 91.42 lakh students who enrol in government primary schools every year, only 13.46 lakh (14.72 per cent) complete higher secondary education, Mehta said, adding the proportion was lower than the national average of 18 per cent.
Gujarat government delayed the implementation of Right To Education (RTE) Act by two years, and even now 27.49 per cent primary schools do not have class VIII, which is against the act's provisions, he said.
Only 11,992 out of 34,237 schools have A or A+ ranking, indicating their poor standard, he said.
At the same time, the number of private primary schools is rising steadily, from 21.97 per cent in 2013-14 to 23.17 per cent in 2015-16,, he said.
"44.56 per cent of secondary and higher secondary schools do not have science laboratories. The state is ranked 18th in the country in this regard, while 30 per cent teachers in secondary schools are not regular (permanent)," he said.
The BJP government "cheated" people with the Gujarat Self-financed Schools (Regulation of Fees) Act, 2017 which allowed private schools to charge the fees they had fixed earlier, irrespective of the cap determined by the government, in this academic year, Mehta said.
Of the 59 universities and colleges in the state, only 33 are government-run, he said.
"Privatisation of higher education was rampant in the last several years. Government colleges have few teachers and government did not allow opening of a single grant-in-aid college in the last ten years," he said.
Funds for higher education were reduced from Rs 1,695 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 1,692 crore in 2017-18, he said.
The fees of 61 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) have been hiked sharply, while there are only six government medical colleges against 15 self-financed ones which charge between Rs 3 lakh to Rs 6.38 lakh as the fee, the senior leader alleged.
"Against 1,080 seats in government colleges, there are 2,300 seats in self-financed colleges, forcing students to pay a hefty price for medical education," he said.
"The condition of engineering education is even worse. Against 16 government colleges, there are 115 private ones. Out of 72,000 seats, around 30,000 remained vacant in the last three years as there are no jobs, while the fees in private colleges are between Rs 60,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh," he said.
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