Economics
CFL is a small school with currently about 70 students on roll and about 15 full time teachers and 5 part time teachers. The school does not receive funding from any external agency, public or private.
The financial philosophy of the school has been driven by two main concerns. Firstly, CFL should be affordable to all parents seriously exploring alternative education, and fees should never be a criterion for admission. Secondly, CFL should remain small, with a high teacher to student ratio.
As a result we have consciously taken certain financial decisions. Fees do not cover all the running costs of the school (in a typical year fees cover 80% of costs) . Teachers’ salaries are not market driven but rather support teachers to live a modest lifestyle (a full time teacher earns about Rs 15000 per month in the financial year 2010-2011). There is a sense of austerity in our expenditure; we need to think hard before we make decisions to spend money (salaries take up 70% of our expenditure) . Finally, the cost of creating infrastructure on campus is not transferred on to parents.
The philosophy and the financial decisions stemming from this philosophy expose the school to constant financial “anxiety.” In spite of the odds (small numbers, low fees), CFL has survived all these years because of considerable care and acumen in managing our finances. Our annual shortfall is met through two sources: the interest from our corpus and donations from all over the globe. Our endowment fund (corpus) has been painstakingly built (through donations and innovative management) over the last 20 years. It enables us to maintain and upgrade infrastructure and buffers us from unforeseen expenses and emergencies.