New Era School plans to move Supreme Court

Mumbai A day after the Bombay High Court asked New Era School not to shift classes to a new location, the management plans to move the Supreme Court on the matter. Even as the High Court directed the management to start classes on the original premises near Gowalia Tank from next Tuesday, trustee Santrupt Misra said that classes would not begin as the management was planning to appeal to the Supreme Court.

“Till the court or the education department or the parents ask us to conduct classes in the new building, we cannot start the academic year,” said Mishra.

A petition was filed by The Forum for Fairness in Education and parents of students belonging to the SSC section of the school when the school management shut the school saying that the building needed repairs and that it had to be shifted to another location till the time the original building could be broken down and built again. Presently, the school has been shifted to two new locations — a building in Tardeo for the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) section and another building near Excelsior Cinema at CST for the SSC section. After the Aditya Birla group recently acquired the school, it started offering (IGCSE) since last year along with SSC.

However, some parents alleged that the school was in good condition and that the management wanted to permanently shut down the SSC section and keep the IGCSE section running as the fees charged for IGCSE were higher than that of SSC. Besides, they also had other complaints including the distance of the new location from the original premises. JT School building, where the school has been shifted to, is around 5 kms away from the original location. The other complaints were that the building did not have a playground and that it was located close to a beer bar.

Misra refuted the allegations and said that the management did not intend to shut the SSC section and that the building was unsafe. “We have given it in writing to the education department that the school would be shifted back once the work on the old premises is complete. We are unable to provide a timeline as we do not know by when the work would be complete. Some constraints are there but we cannot compromise on safety for the sake of inconvenience,” said Misra.

“There is no question of the management making any profit by starting IGCSE as the finances involved in running IGCSE  school are high. It was decided to start IGCSE to give students choice of education,” he claimed.

“If the school is not started, it will be contempt of court. This is not justified. It is a question of around 1,000 students. If the management decides to approach the Supreme Court, we will plan accordingly,” said Manoj Doshi, a parent.