Private schools proliferate, patronised by villagers
B. S. Malik

Sonepat, March 8
Notwithstanding the fact that the government has opened schools, mainly primary ones, in every village of the district, there has been a mushroom growth of schools which are neither recognised by the government nor have trained teachers on their rolls. The sad fact is that parents are all too keen to get their children admitted to these schools. The foremost reason for this is the low standard of education in the government primary schools despite the government posting teachers in full strength in these schools.

Most parents nowadays prefer sending their children to towns for better school education but many of them are not in a position to meet the expenses of the government or CBSE affiliated private schools in the towns. They are left with no other option but to get them enrolled in village primary schools.

Taking advantage of this situation, a number of educated unemployed youths in the villages have opened schools in houses or village chaupals. As the fee in these schools is affordable and the teachers put in maximum efforts, including teaching of English from the first standard itself, more and more parents have started sending their children to these schools.

Interestingly, these children are enrolled in village government primary schools because the private schools are not recognised by the Board of School Education, Haryana. In order to appear in the fifth standard examination which is conducted by the board, it is compulsory to have admission in a government recognised school.

And to overcome this compulsory requirement, the private school teachers have managed to get their students enrolled in the village government schools to make them eligible for appearing in the examination. Though such students rarely attend classes in government schools their daily attendance is marked regularly.

According to information, there are as many as 453 government primary schools, 74 middle schools, 120 high schools and 70 senior secondary schools in the district at present. Most of the primary schools are functioning in the villages and the enrolment strength in these has is reportedly over 70,000.

As per reports from different villages, the actual daily attendance in these schools has never been more than 20 per cent of the total enrolment. During a visit to a government primary school in a village located on the Sonepat-Purkhas-Gohana road the attendance was hardly 23 against the total enrolment of 186. Also, it is not that such practices are confined to primary schools only. The authorities in the Education Department are well aware about these practices but to safeguard the interests of the teachers hardly any action is being taken.

Even the village panchayats, which are authorised to supervise education in village primary schools of the government, are keeping their eyes closed as most of the teaching staff in these schools are locals from the same village or neighbouring ones.

The parents of schoolchildren are also a happy lot as their wards get better education with minimum expenditure compared to urban schools.

Law college for women sanctioned
Our Correspondent

Sonepat, March 8
The vice-chairman of the Bar Council of India, Mr A.C.Aggarwal, today announced that a law college for women has been sanctioned for Kanya Gurukul Khanpur Kalan by the Central government.

The college, which will start from the next academic session, will have three sections: two sections of 3-year degree course and one section of 5-year degree course, with each section having strength of 80 students, he said.

Mr Aggarwal, who was at a seminar on “Domestic Violence Against Women-Social and Statutory Prevention”, said that this college would be the fourth in India after the three women law colleges at Coimbatore, Hyderabad and Jaipur.

However, the Gurukul college will be the first one to be located in the rural areas, he said.

He observed that the women, particularly from the rural areas, had lagged behind in law education and hoped that this college would motivate them to take up law education.

Commenting on the domestic violence against women, Mr Aggarwal said it was more of a social evil than an organised crime and “it will be better to ameliorate it at the domestic level”.

Though there are a number of legal measures against this kind of violence, it should be used only when other alternatives had failed to check it, he suggested.

The president of Gurukul Management Committee, Mr Krishna Malik, informed that the Haryana Government and MDU, Rohtak, had already accorded sanction to the proposal for the law college.

She listed the educational and other facilities existing on the Gurukul premises, and claimed that it was the largest women educational complex in the rural areas of the northern India, where women from Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh were receiving education.