January 13, 4.a.m

 

Indian School Board to introduce New Rules based on Parents Survey

 

Auditing firms owned by board members may be disqualified from doing School auditing, norms to combat malpractices in schools.

 

KM Correspondent

 

The result of a nationwide survey conducted among the 20,000 odd parents of Indian Schools in Oman are being formulated into a well defined agenda by the board of directors of Indian Schools. The Patron of Indian Schools, the Indian Ambassador, K.M.Meena has already put together the survey results into a draft plan of action and forwarded to the board of directors who will implemented it in due course.

 

The parents of Indian Schools have responded enthusiastically on various aspects of Indian school functioning.Various points made by the parents regarding parent-teacher meeting, fees structure, financial aspects of school functioning like school auditing, centralised teacher recruitment and centralised procurement of books and stationery and student counseling have been incorporated into the action plan, which will be implemented after getting some feedback from individual schools. These new ideas will be further refined by the board of directors who will circulate it among 14 Indian Schools in Oman to get their views.

The new board of directors have set up special subcommittees to work out details of rules and regulations governing each section. The new board and the patron are maintaining a healthy relationship, which may result in the speedy implementation of the reform agenda. The board will also introduce some new rules to prevent blatant malpractices like parents being forced to buy costly school uniforms from two textile shops in Muscat. Some new norms and codes of conduct of board members are also likely to be introduced. The auditing of school financial accounts is to be handed over to a panel of independent auditors. The board will also ask individual schools to appoint independent auditors from the panel. The board will also stipulate that auditing firms owned by the board members will be disqualified from being part of the panel of auditors or conduct school audits.

In the past, a number of auditing firms like George Mathew and Company, BDO Patel & Company, etc owned by the members of the board of directors were freely auditing Indians schools in the interior regions. George Mathew & Company, the auditing firm owned by George Mathew, who has been lobbying for a new private school in Seeb, is likely to be disqualified from doing school audits.

 

Similar will be the fate of an auditing firm owned by Yeshpal Mehta, former Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors. He has already resigned from the board. His company was doing the school auditing, despite the firm partner holding a responsible position in the school board.

It may be noted that during the past several years, the school auditing have been done by several auditing firms owned by the former board members. It has been a clear case of unethical business practice where the board members are appointing the auditors, evaluating the audit reports, paying their remuneration and apparently leaving a blind eye on any possible malpractices in the school accounts.

 

Various dubious dealings which were carried out without any guidelines and rules by the board/managing committee members will be brought under clearly defined rules being formulated. 'Earlier the board members were appointing auditors, paying the audit fees and they were the beneficiaries,' say board sources.(kerala monitor.com)