‘Govt must enact laws to control pvt schools’

The Odisha Parent Associations’ Forum (OPAF) on Tuesday demanded that the State Government soon enact laws to restrict private schools from exploiting parents by imposing high amounts of fees and to keep their functioning under control.

The forum and CACL passed a draft bill in this regard at their joint State-level advisory meeting held here, informed OPAF convenor Sanjukta Panigrahi and co-convenor Madhusudan Biswal in a statement.

The draft bill passed after a broad discussion among parents, educationists and legal experts stresses that fixation of admission fees in private schools be regulated by the Government for which Fee Fixation Committees formed at both the State and district levels. Besides, it focuses on imparting of quality education and provision of adequate security of students.

The bill also seeks proper implementation of Right to Education Act, an appropriate grievance system for resolving parents’ problems and provision of awarding jail term and other punishments for schools committing illegalities.

Among others, former Director of Education Prafulla Rath, Amiya Kumar Mohanty, Sudhir Sabat, senior journalist Rabi Das, Sajjan Sharma, N Narayan Reddy, lawyer Sudhir Mohanty, Pradeep Pradhan, Jayant Das, Pratap Sahu and parents’ respresentatives like Mohan Patnaik, Subashis Bose, Satyabrat Parija, Ratikant Satpathy and Madhusudan Biswal participated.