CHENNAI: Activists demanded that free and quality education and healthcare be made the right of every citizen on Thursday. Releasing the citizen manifesto, members of the State Platform for Common School Syllabus (SPCSS) declared that people would vote for the party that includes these demands in their election manifesto and has the political will to implement it.
The manifesto demanded free, compulsory and quality education for all from kindergarten to postgraduation. The SPCSS called for feeless' schools as recommended by the Kothari Commission, but till that goal is achieved it demanded that the party that wins the election prohibit the commercialisation of education. The manifesto suggested that fees of all students studying in the schools of an educational district be collected through a bank and then transferred to the accounts of the respective school. Teacher salaries should also be transferred in this manner. "This will reduce the interaction of the parents with the schools and prevent conflicts," the manifesto said.
When the government made public the fee structures of individual schools as determined by the fee committee, parents told schools saying that they would only pay this fees and not the amounts asked by school managements. But now with the academic year coming to a close, some schools are coercing parents into paying the fee demanded by them by threatening that they will not allow their children to write the annual exam. "Parents will vote for the political party that assures them that it would implement the recommendations of the fee committee," said S Arumainathan, president, Tamil Nadu Federation of Students-Parents Welfare Associations.
"It is our Constitutional right to not just have an animal survival, but to live life with dignity. To live a life of dignity and to improve their lifestyle people should be able to spend on things like visiting historical places with the family, acquiring knowledge by purchasing books and having a library. But today a person with earning capacity is gauged by the amount of money he is able to spend on quality education and healthcare, both of which should be provided free of cost by the government," said general secretary of the SPCSS Prince Gajendra Babu.
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