Guardians for expenditure reduction
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, February 03, 2012: While appealing to all concerned to ensure that students can concentrate on their studies throughout the academic session of 2012, the All Manipur Student Guardians' Organisation has strongly advocated for reduction in education related expenditures.

Speaking to media persons today, advisor of the organisation N Tomba noted that development and progress would remain a mirage as long as the society remain backward in terms of education.

Nevertheless, it is imperative to reduce education related expenditures as far as possible.

Most of the private schools have made their students own at least three to four sets of uniform.

These uniform are embossed with banners of schools and they are supplied by the respective schools.

This may look impressive but it is not a necessity.

School authorities need to ponder whether parents and guardians can afford all these extra expenditures, Tomba said.

The same story goes for exercise books too.

In addition to the text books prescribed by the Board of Secondary Education Manipur, a large number of reference books are being prescribed by private schools in their own way, thereby increasing the burden on students.

He also appealed to school van service operators not to charge exorbitant monthly fares and also to ensure that their vehicles are not too crowded.

He further appealed to all public carriers to give certain concessions to student passengers.

Noting that some schools have adopted lottery system for admission, the advisor questioned why not less than Rs 100 is charged on each student for simply participating in the draw of lots.

By simply conducting draw of lots, some schools have been earning lakhs of rupees.

Tomba also flayed the system of teaching four languages - Hindi, English, Meiteilon and Bengali to kids learning in just Class I.Observing that both parents and students face serious problems every year at the time of Board examinations after studying in schools not recognised by the Government, he appealed to the parents to choose schools carefully at the time of election.

He said that text books published by BSEM and distributed to students under SSA are of very low quality in terms of printing and paper standard.

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