City education bills quite opaque

The proposal of the Delhi government to get the Delhi School Education Act, 1973, amended, and have a new legislation named Delhi School (Verification of Accounts and Refund of Excess Fee) Bill, 2015, passed, would have been considered normal had it not been for certain contentious provisions in these two bills, introduced in the ongoing session of the Delhi Assembly session. The most controversial provision in the first bill is to modify Section 10 (1) of the 1973 Act that deals with the salaries of employees. The existing law maintains parity between the salary of teachers and other staff in government schools with that of private institutions, whereas in the amended version this parity has been done away with. The statement of objects and reasons does not provide any justification why the Delhi government wants to drop the existing provisions, going against the recommendation of a 2012 review panel that warned taking such a step. The panel recognised the unrealistic expectation of paying government salaries for teachers in smaller schools and suggested linking 50 per cent of tuition fee collected for payment of staff salary and hiring more contract teachers to tackle the problem.

Without adequately discussing the pros and cons of those recommendations, the AAP government brought a bill in the Assembly, where it enjoys brute majority. In a newspaper insertion, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal claimed that the amendment is necessary to get rid of corruption in private schools where teachers get government pay scales on paper, but receive far less in reality. Private schools will be given free hand to decide teachers’ salary. While Kejriwal claims existing salaries in private unaided schools would be protected, the bill is silent on that. Critics accuse Kejriwal of misleading and suspect remote hands of private school lobby as the bill came on the eve of the Seventh Pay Commission. If passed, the legislation could be used by these schools to deny new pay scale to the teachers, who will be at the receiving end.

The second legislation also contains questionable clauses, the most crucial of which is to create a backdoor entry point for the government’s handpicked individuals in the running of private unaided schools. The government claims it was necessitated by a 2011 Delhi High Court judgement, which suggested a regulatory mechanism for private schools in Delhi. But again, there was little debate in the public space and the bill’s statement of objects and reasons is too brief to provide all answers. The AAP, which came to power promising honesty and transparency in governance, behaved in an extremely opaque manner on these two bills. Surely, larger debate in the public space is required before they are taken forward.