CBSE, state school principals to form assn against victimization

Nagpur: Groundwork has already started to form the city's first CBSE-state board school principals' association which will focus mainly on protecting their members from "being made a scapegoat". TOI spoke with some persons who were part of the core team and all felt that principals are the easiest person to blame.

Not wanting to be identified, one of the principals said, "In the Ryan International tragedy the principal was arrested. Even in Nagpur, we have had principals being arrested for incidents which were not even remotely connected to them. Does the railway minister get arrested if there's an accident at the station? Does the aviation minister get arrested after a crash? Then why does a principal have to behind bars for incidents that are comparatively the same?"

The proposed association will have an aggressive touch to it in dealing with such issues, something that may set it apart from current associations.

The city has two state board school associations and a CBSE Sahodaya. Since the latter is focused on academics and teacher training almost entirely, this left the space wide open for an association to rally around principals.

"Of course there will be many CBSE school principals but our doors are open to all. What we need to do is to speak in a strong and united voice whenever an injustice happens. Principals are manhandled by parents, abused by self styled activists, threatened by education officials and prosecuted by police without any logic being applied. This has to stop," said one of the core team members.

TOI has learnt that a well known city lawyer has also been consulted on these issues by principals. "The association will be a strong platform to bring together principals and ensure that none of us are treated unfairly. Usually principals are left to fight off on their own with nobody coming to speak for them. Everyone is afraid because there is no proper platform to deal with these issues head on," said a principal.

They now hope that their proposed association will take care of all these problems and emerge as a strong voice to be able to lend support to their members.

"There is a law that protects doctors from being manhandled, there's a law for journalists' protection also. So why not principals? We are part of a profession that deals with numerous people in a single day and all our interactions are public. Activists storm our schools and threaten to beat us up if we don't listen to them and there's nothing protecting us," said one principal.

Another principal said, "It's time for everyone to stand together and a new association with such objectives will inspire confidence and allow all of us to deal with crisis." Though no specific timeline has been set for the association to be formed, everything seems to be set for a December launch.