NEW DELHI: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has threatened to recommend cancellation of CBSE affiliations to over 100 schools across the country against which complaints have been received that they force parents and students to buy books from private publishers.
The child rights’ body has sought reports from district education officers in these cases.
NCPCR member (education) Priyank Kanoongo said that while 18000 odd schools affiliated with the CBSE are required to follow NCERT syllabus and schools attached with state education boards are bound to stick to the respective SCERT curriculum, few do it in reality.
“We, at NCPCR, have been receiving complaints from hundreds of parents that they are being forced to buy books by private publishers for Rs 8-10,000 for even elementary classes. This is nothing but sheer exploitation,” he said.
“Therefore we have forwarded the complaints to district education officers for enquiry reports and will recommend withdrawing affiliation of these schools that violate rules,” Kanoongo added.
In letters written to state governments in February this year, the child right’s panel had outlined that section 29 of the Right to Education act, 2009 specifies that there should be uniformity of syllabus at elementary levels.
“However, as schools are arbitrarily imposing their decisions of following private publishers based on rates of commissions they receive, this is a clear cut violation of the clause,” the NCPCR had said.
The Union human resource development ministry and the CBSE too have issued warnings to its affiliate schools against the sale of books from private publishers in their premises in recent times but to little avail.
“It is evident that the practice of violating our communiqué is openly going on in many cases. We are now deciding what to do to curb this menace,” an official in the school education department said.