Page 108 - EW December 2020

Cover Story EW BUDGET PRIVATE SCHOOLS RANKINGS 2020-21

INDIA’S BEST BUDGET PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Affordable BPS occupy a
special and controversial
space in India’s complex
multi-layered K-12 system.
Politicians, bureaucrats and
leftists love to hate them
because they are for-profit
and pride themselves as
English-medium schools

ithin India’s complex,
multi-layered K-12 school
Wsystem, budget private
schools — essentially affordable pri-
maries (with a sprinkling of secondary
schools) — occupy a special and con-
troversial space. These are privately St. Mary’s Kalyan’s Bharat Malik (centre left): valuable alumni response
promoted, low-priced schools that
politicians, bureaucrats and Left intel- looned to an estimated 400,000 with pay school fees during the pandemic
lectuals love to hate because they are a staggering enrolment of 60 million lockdown, even while directing school
for-profit and also because almost all children. For aspirational working and managements to continue paying
of them pride themselves as English- lower middle-class households, BPS teacher and staff salaries, hundreds of
medium schools. fashioned after private schools and BPS have shut down and thousands
The country’s business illiterate ne- providing English-medium education, are confronted with the prospect of
ta-babu brotherhood and lefties hate offer the best alternative to dysfunc- bankruptcy. Repeated demands by
the word ‘profit’ and are unanimous tional government schools defined by BPS managements, representative as-
in their belief that children learn best decrepit infrastructure, chronic teach- sociations including NISA (National
in the language their parents speak er absenteeism and English language Independent Schools Alliance) which
at home rather than a language im- aversion. has a membership of 60,000 afford-
posed upon the country by British However with establishment opin- able schools, and EducationWorld
imperialists. The fact that contempo- ion ranged against BPS, because they (see https://www.educationworld.
rary India has 29 official languages are increasingly drawing children in/dear-prime-minister-why-no-
spoken in 278 dialects, or the reality away from government schools, thou- pandemic-package-for-education/)
that a primary classroom may com- sands have been issued closure notic- for loans and grants under the prime
prise children speaking over a dozen es for non-compliance with s.19 and minister’s Rs.20 lakh crore economy
mother tongues hasn’t dented their Schedule of the Right of Children to stimulus package of May 2020, have
belief that pre-primary and primary Free and Compulsory Education (aka failed to evoke any response from the
including upper primary school chil- RTE) Act, 2009, which stipulates min- Central or state governments.
dren should be taught in the mother imal infrastructure and teacher-pupil In EducationWorld your editors
tongue. ratio norms from which government believe that BPS discharge a vitally
Evidently, the vast majority of the schools are exempt, and deliberately important socio-economic devel-
population — especially poor aspira- target BPS. opment role as they provide lower
tional households — don’t agree with Moreover, the raging Coronavirus middle and working class households
this holy trinity. Because the number pandemic has hit affordable private an alternative to dysfunctional gov-
of budget private schools (BPS) across schools hardest. With state govern- ernment schools. Therefore, earlier
the country — many of them ‘unrec- ments issuing confusing and contra- this year in a cover story following a
ognised’ by government — has bal- dictory circulars to the public to not national survey, we published elabo-

108 EDUCATIONWORLD DECEMBER 2020