Andhra Pradesh: Assembly passes Bill to regulate school education in the state

The Andhra Pradesh School Education Regulatory and Monitoring Commission (Amendment) Bill 2019 was passed by the Andhra Pradesh State Legislative Assembly on Thursday, December 12.

Education Minister of the state Adimoolapu Suresh while presenting the Bill said that it aims at regulating the standards, fees structure and reservations to poorer sections while bringing in Junior Colleges also into the ambit of the Monitoring Commission, headed by a retired High Court Judge.

As mentioned in Chapter III clause 9 (iv) of the Bill and said by the Education Minister, the Bill also ensures 25% reservations to poor students, free of cost under the Right to Education Act. It will be checked by the Monitoring Commission and violation of the clause will attract punitive punishment. 

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The commercialisation of education sector in the state, where private and corporate educational institutions charge steep fees in for EAMCET, IIT, NEET, and other competitive exams coaching will be checked on the implementation of the Bill. 

The State has 3,339 junior colleges of which 2,014 are in the private sector while 471 are government junior colleges, 730 in the government sector and 124 are aided colleges. The number of students in Junior Colleges is 10,64,127 and the number of teaching staff stands at 37,941.

As mentioned in the introductory statement of the Bill, the Monitoring Commission will maintain standards of the Intermediate Education, regulation of fee, the competence of teachers, information disclosure, effective inspection, monitoring of Junior Colleges, and implementation of the provisions of Right to Education Act, punitive measures on defaulting junior colleges and to regulate all the matters pertaining to Intermediate Education.

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It will also ensure that standards of infrastructure, admission, teaching, student assessments, examinations, etc are being maintained along with ensuring redressal of grievances of students and parents in a time-bound manner. 

The Assembly passed two other bills by voice vote on Thursday -- The Andhra Pradesh Charitable and Hindu Religious Institution and Endowments (Second Amendment ) Act 2019, which enables a review of the number of Board members of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) and The Andhra Pradesh Excise (Amendment) Act 2019 which enables the State to levy Retail Excise Tax, Additional Retail Excise tax, manufacture excise tax and levy any other tax.

(With inputs from ANI)

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