District administration plans to push private schools to get DTCP approval

COIMBATORE: As the state school education department has extended the recognition of private schools which do not have approval from the Directorate of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) till May 2020, the district school education department will seek to push schools to get the approval soon, officials said.
In June 2018, it was made mandatory for self-financing schools, aided schools, nursery and primary schools and matriculations schools which were built before 2011, to get approval from the Local Planning Authority or the DTCP. The school education department had given time to private schools, which had no DTCP approval, to get approval by May 31 this year. However, earlier this week, the department extended the recognition till May 31 of the next year, citing the welfare of students studying in these schools.
The official communication said the director of matriculation schools had sought the state to extend the approval for a year as the schools needed approval to send Class X and Class XII students for board exams.
An official from the district school education department said they had conducted a meeting on August last year with representatives of private schools in the district and had asked them to get necessary approvals within May 31 this year. “Many schools don’t have approvals and those who have applied have also not got approvals yet. Now as the state has extended the time for another year, the department would push the schools to get approvals within next year,” the official said.
On the other hand, representatives of private schools said the approval process was cumbersome and expensive in some cases. “Some schools were asked to pay Rs 54 lakh for the approval process. The infrastructure of some schools might be big, but the student strength might be low. They cannot afford to pay a huge sum to get approval,” state president of all private schools’ welfare association Maya Devi Shankar said, and added that, “Though the process is now online, it takes a long time to get approval.”
In many cases, schools were built on leased lands, so they had to depend on landowners to get approvals, and the owners were not always willing to undergo the procedures, she said.