Kathmandu, September 17 Private and Boarding Schools Organisation today expressed dissatisfaction with the new scholarship criteria fixed by the Compulsory and Free Education Bill endorsed yesterday. The bill has provisioned that private schools and schools running under educational trusts should provide scholarship to 10 to 15 per cent of the total students. According to the bill, schools having up to 500 students should allocate full scholarship to 10 per cent of students, while schools with a total number of 500 to 800 students should provide scholarship to 12 per cent students. Similarly, schools with more than 800 students should provide scholarship to 15 per cent of the total students. Officials of PABSON today expressed their dissatisfaction with the new scholarship criteria at a press meet. President of PABSON Bijay Sambahamphe said private companies were paying 20 per cent tax of their total income, but schools were paying 25 per cent. “Moreover, we are already providing scholarship to 10 per cent students. We are not in a condition to increase the scholarship quota,” he added. Sambahamphe also said the government should have rather focused on introducing mechanisms to implement the existing scholarship provision effectively. He questioned whether the government itself was able to provide free education as envisioned in the constitution. Article 31 of the constitution has guaranteed right to education as a fundamental right of citizens, which guarantees access to education and free education up to the secondary level. While the new act has not upheld the spirit of the constitution, educationists have said the government should rather introduce strict rules for city-based private schools and support community schools to enhance their quality. “The government should increase the scholarship quota to 25 to 30 per cent for those schools that are doing business in urban areas. While the government can also support such schools financially and through other means if they are willing to take schools to rural and underdeveloped areas,” said educationist Bidhya Nath Koirala. PABSON officials claimed that of the total, around 2.2 million students studying in 6,500 schools under PABSON, 200,000 students were getting scholarship at present.