A public interest litigation has been filed in the Madras High Court seeking a direction to the State government to upgrade all government schools, imparting elementary education, into schools of excellence so that it need not pay crores of rupees every year to the private schools under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act of 2009.
Justices S. Vaidyanathan and R. Kalaimathi on Tuesday sought the response of the government to the PIL petition filed by advocate P. Pugalenthi. His counsel M. Radhakrishnan told the court that the RTE Act mandated State governments to establish neighbourhood schools within three years and the stipulations prescribed for such institutions required them to be schools of excellence.
However, the failure of the government to establish such quality institutions had forced most parents to admit their children in private schools under the RTE Act. The result was that the government had to reimburse the fees for those children and the amount ran to several hundred crores, the counsel said and insisted that the money could instead be spent on establishing government schools.
