Gurgaon: Multiple deadlines and assurances by the government on fee reimbursement have failed to arouse interest in both schools and parents on the CM Haryana Equal Education Relief Assistance and Grant (Cheerag) scheme.
Only 5% of private schools in the state and just three in the city have shown interest in the scheme, which aims at providing free education to students of government schools from EWS families.
The response from parents has been lukewarm too. Only 6% of the seats in private schools showing interest have been sought by the parents so far.
The Cheerag scheme is a remodeled version of Rule 134A, which made it mandatory for private schools to reserve 10% seats for students from EWS families.
The scheme was launched by the state government in April this year after revoking Rule 134A led to widespread protests by parents.
Unlike Rule 134A, the government this time has not made it legally binding on any private school to offer free education to students from ESW families. Last month, TOI had reported that only 381 private schools offering 24,987 seats across the state had shown interest in the scheme.
There was speculation that the schools that actually offered their seats were not so popular among the parents.
According to experts, the private-government school split among admission seekers under Rule 134A was 80% and 20%, respectively.
And since only government school students are eligible for seeking admissions under Cheerag, the response has been predictably negligible.
“Since the scheme is meant only for government schools, it is targeting just 20% of students. Moreover, none of the popular schools are participating in it. Those that have given their consent evoke little to no interest among parents. Thus, even out of those 20%, very few want to seek admission under the scheme,” said Anagha Shetty, an operations associate at Indus Action, a policy implementation and advocacy organisation.
Education department officials iterated the assertions. “Fee is not the only cost you incur when you seek admissions in private schools. Such schools have so many activities and they charge for that. These things aren’t covered under any scheme. So, government school students were never interested in Rule 134A. Moreover, now that the government is giving free tablets and launching Model Sanskriti Schools, students find it better to study in state-run schools than seek admissions in the schools that have shown interest under Cheerag,” said an elementary education department official.
Parents asserted that the scheme was flawed as it lacked legal backing and there was no guarantee that a student admitted in a session would be promoted to the next class and offered free education.
“This has no legal basis. Private schools have always wanted to get rid of this scheme when it was a legal compulsion. So, why would they now undertake it when it is only voluntary?” asked Ashok Agarwal, the national president of the All India Parents Association (AIPA).
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