Infrastructure requirements relaxed, registration fee slashed

Bengaluru, Jan 23 (DHNS): The government has issued separate, tailor-made guidelines for pre-nursery schools in Karnataka, fulfilling one of their long-pending demands. Until now, these schools were guided by the same regulations prescribed for primary educational institutions.

The old guidelines threatened the very existence of pre-nursery schools, setting unrealistic demands for them on infrastructure and registration fees.

The Department of Public Instruction issued a notification on January 18, relaxing infrastructure guidelines for independent pre-nursery schools and reducing their registration fees.

Earlier, the proprietor of a pre-nursery school had to pay Rs 25,000 as registration fee and an additional Rs 10,000 as processing fee. In the new notification, the processing fee has been done away with and a school in Bengaluru has to pay only Rs 10,000 for registration. The registration fee has been fixed based on the location of the school.

For schools outside Bengaluru, the fee is Rs 5,000 and for schools in rural areas, it is Rs 2,000.

Since pre-nursery schools have fewer students than primary ones, the new guidelines do not specify the number of classrooms required for them. But it has been stipulated that each child must have one square metre of space.

For a student strength above 30, a separate classroom is required.
The government amended the guidelines following a memorandum by the Karnataka Council for Pre-Nursery Schools in March last year.

The managements had pointed out that the size and number of classrooms, for instance, prescribed for primary schools were not required for pre-nursery schools and were creating hurdles for them. The council had also urged the government to simplify the registration process.

No to proprietorship

While so far pre-nursery schools could be run by individual proprietors, they are now required to register either as a society or trust or under the Companies Act. This has been brought in to ensure a monitoring mechanism for schools.

Aruna Prasad, president of the council, told Deccan Herald, “We are very happy with the new guidelines. It might be a bit of a problem for some schools to register as a society or trust as they would be required to bring in more people on the board of management.

We, however, understand that the government had to take this step to monitor schools.”
Under the new guidelines, a society or trust can open a pre-nursery school at any time of the year by applying three months before, without having to wait for the beginning of the academic year.