PUNE: Sometimes, getting a bonafide certificate from the school one has studied in or a duplicate mark sheet or getting the transfer certificate from your own junior college for admission to a different college needs several documents to be submitted, along with trips to the school or respective education department’s office where often lame excuses are made for not getting the work done.

Education commissioner Suraj Mandhare has notified that various student-related services need to be completed in a time-bound manner under the Right to Services Act 2015. The new system will be implemented in all education department-related offices, schools, and teacher training colleges across the state from May 1.
“The list of services, documents required to avail them, and appellate authorities will be displayed in schools, education offices as well as their websites. More services will be added in due course. As for services for teachers, we have already included many issues pertaining to them in the list of services in Annexure B of the notification. There are 35 services related to students and 70 services related to teachers that will be rolled out from May 1,” Mandhare said.
A first and second appellate authority will also be appointed in case the service is not delivered in the prescribed time-frame and the student or the parent wishes to complain about it.
Mahendra Ganpule, spokesperson of Maharashtra State Headmasters’ Forum said that the new rules will be helpful for parents and students, but such policies must not be limited to just the schools but also the government departments and the ministry.
“Time-bound services are a must for any system to work efficiently. Many-a-times, we see that people at an individual level delay simple work for students without any reason. For such people, making it compulsory to work under a time-frame helps to deliver services without unnecessary delays,” Ganpule added.
Ganpule said that the same efficiency is expected in the government machinery too. “Sometimes, we send a proposal to the ministry or a department and it does not move forward. There are queries raised for a particular reimbursement or a proposal, but the person to whom it is directed to never comes to know of it till the time he or she goes up to the department to enquire about the status. Nowadays, everything is happening online so sending a mail with the query hardly takes any time. We want the government machinery too to work with the same efficiency that they expect the departments and schools to work with,” he said.
Vaishali Bafna, a parent and education activist, said that such policies will reduce the harassment faced by parents and students for documents that are their right.
“Schools harass students when they ask for a bonafide certificate. The authorities always know if a student has been in the school. Yet sometimes, they ask for documents. With a time-frame prescribed for such important documents, it becomes much easier to get them. Same must also be applicable for getting caste certificate and caste validity certificate,” she said.





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