1,500 private schools yet to apply for accreditation by govt

Bengaluru: Although the SSLC and other class examinations are approaching in the state, the school accreditation renewal process for the year 2024-25 is not yet complete. Alt-hough the Education Department has already allowed the renewal of accreditation twice, about 1500 schools have not yet submitted their applications. Since last year, the government has made the new registration of state curriculum schools, first ac-creditation, renewal of accreditation, issuance of No Objection Certificate (NOC) to central curriculum schools, and their renewal process online.

Accordingly, in the current year, more than 8,000 aided and unaided private schools have applied for renewal of accreditation so far, and 685 schools have not received renewal of accreditation even in the 2nd period. The applications of 148 schools are pending at the district and taluk level authorities. There are a total of more than 15,000 unaided private schools and about 6,000 aided private schools in the state. Out of these 21,000 schools, about 11,000 schools have already been accredited for 5 years in the past few years.Those schools cannot apply this year. Out of the remaining 10,000 schools, 8,637 schools have applied for renewal of accreditation this year. Out of these, 7,804 schools have been renewed. The applications of the remaining 685 schools have been rejected and the accreditation has not been renewed, and applications are in-vited again:

The schools whose applications have been rejected are again waiting for the third extension of the application submission period by the Education Department. Many schools are not following the criteria required for renewal of accreditation.

It is heard within the department that at the last stage, the government is calculating that it will renew the accreditation by writing a promise to complete the criteria for the next year anyway.For renewal of school recognition, private schools have to submit 22 documents in-cluding school registration certificate, first recognition certificate, first renewal certifi-cate, then annual renewal, PTR copy if a society, site certificate of the school’s own land, account, revenue receipt, registration certificate obtained for at least 30 years if it is rented or leased.

These include criteria that have been added in recent years, including land conver-sion of school land for educational purposes, school building plan approval and safe-ty standards, and fire safety facilities. However, in the wake of some private schools raising objections and fighting a legal battle against some of these criteria, the recog-nition has been allowed to be renewed for only one year, applying only to the current academic year and obtaining an affidavit promising to fulfil these standards next year.