Private schools to remain closed in Andhra Pradesh on July 3 in protest against ‘arbitrary’ RTE actions

Visakhapatnam: The private schools managements associations of Andhra Pradesh has called for a statewide closure of private schools on Thursday, July 3, to demonstrate their resentment against alleged arbitrary actions being taken against private schools with regard to RTE quota admissions.

In an official release, the associations said that it is ‘very unfortunate that some officials are overreacting towards private school managements and enforcing three-man committees and inspections across all the schools in the districts, with prejudice. In response to the unjust and unilateral decisions taken by some officials—forcing private unaided schools to admit RTE 12.1.c applicants without due verification, harassing school administration with show cause notices, and threatening to cancel recognition—all private unaided schools in the state will remain closed on Thursday, July 3, expressing our resentment, with a request to the govt to kindly address the concerns and safeguard our rights. We also request the officials to kindly refrain from any notices and actions without due diligence of the issues and rules."

"We take pride that private schools are serving over 55% of the students in Andhra Pradesh, without any financial burden on the state and that over 85% of the private schools have fees less than one-third of the expenditure made by the govt, which is around 90,000 per child per year. Any disruption to private schools' administration not only affects 10,000 managements but also affects about 3 lakh staff and 40 lakh students, which will be the sole responsibility of those enforcing such arbitrary actions," they said.