First PPP-model school in IT Park soon

Being in line with Ministry of Human Resource Development’s (MHRD) policy draft on ‘PPPs in school education’,the development of the city’s first such school will be divided into core and non-core processes.

The government will take care of the non-core processes like acquiring land,construction and maintenance of the school campus. Private partners will perform core processes comprising administrative functions,teaching and learning activities. The UT Education Department has sent a draft proposal to MHRD after including the project in its next five year plan,which begins in April.

“We have already directed the Department of Architecture to earmark the land area to us. After acquiring land,we will invite private partners for bidding,” said DPI (Schools),Sandeep Hans.

The school will admit a total of 2,500 students. According to officials,the model school’s fees will be lesser than that in private schools.

“Since the school’s infrastructure maintenance will be looked after totally by the government,the fee will be much lesser than that of any private (unaided) school in the city. However,the exact amount can only be finalised after the administrative set up comes into being,” added Hans.

In its policy draft on ‘PPPs in school education’,MHRD had recommended the state governments to take BOOT model,being used in Information Communication Technology (ICT) in many Indian states,as an exemplar.

In the BOOT model the government pays the private party periodically on the basis of number of students and the private party holds the responsibility of running the school. Similar projects were taken up in Punjab in 2010,wherein five schools based PPP model (called Adarsh schools) were established. However,out of the 110 sites set aside for these schools across the state,Punjab Education Development Board managed to allot only 62 to the private bidders.

Owing to disagreement of private partners over the allotment rules,the department had failed to find many contenders for the schools since some of the allottees wanted the department to relax its allotment conditions to let them to use school premises for commercial teaching after school hours.