Educational consultants mull association

Around 5,000 Indian educational consultants, a majority of them based out of Punjab, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, are in the process of floating an ‘Association of Overseas Educational Consultancies (AOIC)’, said Surya Ganesh Valmiki, chairman and managing director of city-based Valmiki Group.

“The idea will become a reality in the next six months,” he said, adding Andhra Pradesh alone had about 2,000 small and big overseas educational consultancies, and it was time to check the credentials of these agents.

The proposed association will have its national headquarters in Hyderabad. One retired top cop, who was earlier associated with the State Task Force, will head the association, which initially is expected to have about 500 members.

Stating they would also approach the Centre for a strong governing body to regulate education consultancy services, Valmiki said the government was earlier considering setting up a monitoring agency but nothing much had moved since then.