keralamonitor.com, March 10, 2002.

School committee Buys computer from the highest Bidder?

Is there any major change in the functioning of Indian Schools? The answer is partially yes because there is a new patron who has suspended some of the previous board members and infused fresh expertise to manage schools. Some of them are genuinely interested in improving the schools. However, the other side of the story is that the members of the Management Committees of individual schools, who are sure that their term will come to an end within March 2002 have been busy taking crucial decisions regarding major investments like constructing new school buildings, buying new computers etc before they retire or resign.

Many people have raised an important question: Why many people are keen to get into the school committees and boards, a non paying thankless job. Even though these are honorary services offered by Indian community members, there are many hidden benefits traditionally enjoyed by such people. Read the following story of an Indian school.

One of the leading Indian schools decided to buy large number of computers before the management committee members resign or asked to leave. Quotations were sought from eight computer vendors and all the quote amounts (computer price) were supposed to be top secret. The normal practice is to open all the bids after the final date and select the company that offer the best quote.

If the school management committee is keen to serve the interest of students and parents, they would always buy from the company which gave the best quote. But in this case, the respected members of the management committee had a different priority and bought from the worst quoted company.

One of the committee members, a lady and her husband are running computer business. They are also associated with one of the companies which quoted for supplying computers to the Indian school. Instead of going for the best and cheapest quote that offered the computers at an economical rate, the honbourable committee members secretly opened all the quotes and replaced the 'preferred company's quote' which was high with a new quotation from the same firm. The company in which the lady board member is interested has offered computers at the highest possible price. The contract was won by the same company. This is one instance to show the manner in which schools have been 'managed' by the committees over the years.

The Indian School constitution clearly state that the committee members should not do any commercial deals with the schools and that no school contract should be taken by the committee members. In this particular case, the school management committee has not only violated this norm, but they have preferred the costly quotes. The whole exercise raise questions about the integrity of the school management committee members who have taken all the pains to favour a company in which one of them is interested. If this type of dubious deals are stuck by the school management committee amidst all press reports about corruption and malpractice in Indian schools, what would have been going on for the last ten to twelve years when no such questions were raised?

According to some of the computer companies, to get such contracts from Indian schools, they have to give free computer to the management committee members. "We had to take new computers to school management committee members who are staying in the interior," said the manager of one such company.

In the same school, the management committee decided to charge computer training fees from each student including from the lower classes. Even though a section of higher class students are not attending computer training, computer lab fees was reportedly charged from most of them . It was not done unintentionally as there was special instruction from the higher ups to charge computer fees from every student. Even though one or two parents protested, others did not notice the fact that they have paid computer fees, even without their children attending the computer course!

Sources also revealed that most of the school maintenance contracts are given to specialised companies which give inflated bills. With all these practices remaining in tact, there appears to be no change in the functioning of schools. The outgoing MC members are worried whether the new members would examine the Pandora's Box of old account books. Efforts are on to ensure that their own people are selected as the new management committee members.

Already reports suggest that a former school president, who was in power for several years, is already chosen to become the new president of an Indian School. The outgoing members of an Indian school are also lobbying to enter the management committees of a proposed new Indian school. Religious, community and political cards are used to ensure that membership in school committees go to the "selected few'.

Management committees will come and go, but these deals would continue for ever. What is needed is a change in the mind set of people at the helm of affairs and the introduction of necessary checks and balances to control such white collar crimes.

CBSE Question Paper leak out; New measures to strengthen exam control

Due to complaints made by concerned members of public, the higher authorities have strengthened the control mechanism and this year (2002) there was no possibility of leakage. New control measures were introduced and the question paper was not available even to the teachers for perusal. In the previous years, question paper was available to teachers just half an hour after the examination started. However, in the year 2002, it was available outside the examination hall only two hours after the examination started. We are not disclosing the Gulf country or the school concerned because our intention is not to target individuals but to make the authorities rectify the problem so that meritorious students are not victimised. The issue was presented to the higher authorities about six months back. We feel that there should be an Examination Control Board for the Gulf countries to closely monitor the officials, teachers (especially those who are doing tuitions), and others involved in the examination process.Watch this space for detailed report about the loopholes which needs to be plugged to ensure transparent examination system.