Pledging Future Generations to the School Promoters

Indian School Muscat, one of the largest Indian community schools in Muscat was the first school in Oman started with 135 students in 1975. The school has got a huge building built on a piece of land donated by His Majesty Sultan Qaboos who has been a humanist first and then a ruler. The land was donated to the Indian community. The ISM has about 6,000 students, a few hundreds of teaching and non teaching staff and a deficit balance sheet. This is the largest co-educational institution in the Gulf with about 6,000 students. Of course the school accounts are audited, but no M.B.A or C.A degrees are needed to see that something is wrong somewhere.

Unlike all other Indian Community schools, which are started as branches of the main school on leased or rented buildings, the ISM has got its own building and premises. In financial terms this means that there is no need to pay monthly rent - which is a burden on several other schools due to the unfavorable lease agreements. In the case of some schools, buildings are taken from the local sponsor -an Indian businessman or contractor - at a highly inflated rent. As one observer commented, one years' rent will be more than sufficient to construct a school building of the same size and pattern! It appears that the rent is fixed in advance for schools at an inflated rate, causing considerable financial loss to the school. The major beneficiary is the building owner, who is often an influential Indian businessmen with representative in the Board, School Committees or close to the Patron or Indian politicians .

In addition to this type of financial agreements with the school, the businessman who is concerned about the well being of the Indian community, has got his name engraved in the school for donating fund for the school construction. Same is the case with another Indian School. This school is also having a building, but its legal status is not known.

In fact before starting the schools, refundable deposits of RO 100 per student is taken from parents. If there are say, 1000 -2000 students when a school is started, the promoter could collect RO 100,000 - RO 200,000. "If you deposit this amount in any bank, they will be willing to finance school project without any hesitation. This amount will also fetch huge interest, which will be another source of income to the school," say informed sources. In the case of a leading school in the capital area, about 800 students of the parent school was sent to the new school saying that it is a branch of the main school. However now things appeared to have moved in a different direction -the offspring school is credited with charging the highest fees in Oman - RO 35 per month.

In the case of other leading schools in the capital region nobody knows what exactly is the monthly outgo from the school budget for paying rent to the building. Nobody has seen the agreement signed between the Indian Embassy (the school Patron, who is supposed to be concerned about the welfare of parents and Indian community or the school boards) and the businessmen who is always having an eagle's eye on the profit side of running a school or educational institution. Even after charging RO 35 per month from students, one school is said to be running on losss!

The billion dollar question is --how can the former patrons and boards sign Memorandum of Understandings without considering the interest of parents and students. One reason for the high fees charged by various Indian community schools is the inflated rent which goes directly into the promoter's pocket or his chronies.

Teachers salary is sited as the major expenditure by most of the schools, but facts tell a different story…watch this space for more news…