VISAKHAPATNAM: Not learning lessons from the past, more number of playschools are seen mushrooming in the city. Even after the incident of a three-year-old boy died when a slab collapsed on him at the private play school in 2017, no playschools have taken permission from the district education officials.
As the new academic year begins, there are new playschools mushrooming in the city. There are around 250 playschools in the city. While some run schools charge high fee promoting advertisements to attract parents, some schools run in dilapidated buildings in the congested lanes. Even after the death incident of the boy last year, there has been no change in playschools which fail to get any recognition. Adding to this, the playschools are found high amount of fee including admission fee. Promoting to schools running in international standards, some school are charging admission fee to Rs 10,000 and the monthly fee would be around Rs 4,000 per month.
"There are many advertisments about playschools coming to my notice and when we enquired, there are schools which charge admission fee for every year. Further, I was more concerned about security whether school has CCTV camera's but no schools which I saw are under security", said Kusuma, homemaker.
For some of the parents who are more concerned about security and safety of their children, some schools are promoting with advertisments posing as playschools with international standards. Even the parents do not check whether the school has mandatory certificate and recognition but just join them looking at the kind of colourful environment.
Moreover, play schools do not have NOC for the buildings which has and even few schools in the single rooms at houses, no playschools have board displayed outside and are running in bad conditions.
When spoke to District Education Officer B Lingeswara Reddy, he said so far they have closed 60 unrecognised primary schools (class I to V) which are running play schools along. "There is no recognition given for playschools as it is not in the rule position, but many schools are running along with class primary classes. We will continue and identify schools running schools against the norms and play schools setup in congested lanes", DEO said.