Editorial
Overseeing kindergartens
Take stakeholders on board
The issue of mushrooming kindergartens needs to be addressed in earnest. The finalisation of the Non-government Primary (Bangla and English medium schools) School Registration Rules, 2011 is a right step forward in this direction, provided these rules are applied rationally.
Registration fees for the schools have been prescribed depending on their status as decided by the authority as primary, temporary and permanent. Those schools will have to fulfil certain criteria to be registered. These include ownership of land, existence of a management committee and so on.
The government would do well to take on board the oversight enforcement body stakeholders, such as guardians, teachers and members of the management committees of the successfully running kindergartens. That would go a long way in devising a failsafe oversight mechanism and maintaining uniformity in their standards.
A word of caution. If past experiences are any guide, it has to be admitted that it is through the regulatory mechanism that corruption often creeps into any system. So, the government will have to establish necessary check and balance to keep the system open and above board.
It is important to note that these kindergartens did not come out of the blue. It was the growing demand in the education sector for them that they came into being. It all took place against the backdrop of the traditional government-run schools' inability to accommodate the ever rising number of admission-seeking children. Worse still, the quality of classroom instructions was also falling in those schools, if only due to reduced student-teacher ratio.
Despite certain aberrations in the sphere, the kindergarten schools came handy to fill in this gap. It is, therefore, expected that the government would duly take note of the positive role these kindergartens have been playing in spreading English education for the emerging generations of schoolchildren. That calls for taking special care so that these schools are not stifled in the name of regulation.
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