Schools overpaid for RTE slots, thanks to BEO blunders

Some private schools have received excess payment from the government for admitting children under the Right To Education (RTE) quota, because Block Education Officers (BEO) miscalculated the reimbursement amount, according to a review by the Department of Public Instruction.

A newly formed wing in the department reviewed the reports sent by BEOs, including audit reports of private schools.

A top official in the department suggested that the BEOs had “absolutely no knowledge” of how to calculate the reimbursement amount.

 Some of them did not even bother to make an effort to workout the method of calculation and directly released Rs 11,848 for class 1 and Rs 5,924 for Lower Kindergarten (LKG), as fixed by the government. The BEOs need to be circumspect while calculating the reimbursement: Study the audit reports of schools, their fee receipt and government-fixed reimbursement fee. Among three, the lowest fee should be considered for reimbursement under the RTE quota, Commissioner for Public Instruction K S Satyamurthy told Deccan Herald.

Reimbursement, twice?

This apart, they should not consider the non-recurring expenses in the audit reports of schools while calculating the per head expenditure incurred on each student. If this was bad enough, some Block Education Officers even sanctioned the reimbursement twice, according to the review of the documents.

Higher officials have instructed them to rectify the errors.  An official in the wing said that some private schools had reported a sudden jump in the expenses.

For instance, one school showed paying Rs 1.5 lakh as salary to staff in 2012.  The figure jumped to 15 lakh in 2014. Similar is the case with other recurring expenses such as rent paid, maintenance etc.

Records under scanner

Satyamurthy further added that the scrutiny of reimbursement was going on and the excess amount paid to schools would be known only after the wing   submitted its report in the first week of April.

The strict scrutiny of past reimbursement records has raised hackles among schools which already complain that the government does not promptly reimburse them for RTE admissions and that it has mandated the submission of audit reports for release of payment.