Following my article on the mess fee regulation has caused in Tamil Nadu, a Twitter user pointed me to this post on Facebook which stated there were errors in my calculation of expenditure per student in government schools.The Facebook post is partially correct as my article contained an egregious error which is regretted. I have since corrected the article with an update at the bottom accepting the error. I thank readers for pointing it out.The error was that instead of using the total enrolment in schools at all levels, I had used the data available in DISE for just elementary schools. That data sheet can be seen here. To add to that there was a typing error. What should have been 38,58,172 was written as 3,85,872. But the typing error did not alter my calculation, so the amount would have still been the same. At Rs. 17, 173 crore for 38,58,172 students, the expenditure per student would be Rs 45,956, as mentioned in the article.Anyway there was an oversight on my part, and I apologise for that.The Facebook post, however, was not completely correct either. The figure of 1.3 crore students encompasses ALL school students in Tamil Nadu, studied in private and government schools. You can read the document from which the information was sourced here.Anyhow, this piqued my curiosity to find out what the real cost per student is for government schools in Tamil Nadu. Unfortunately, I am unable to find latest data online on the exact number of students in the TN government schools. While for elementary school we have the data, I cannot find the same for secondary schools. The School Education department’s web page still shows 2005-06 data. If anyone else can find the figures, do write to us.Meanwhile, I did find this, thanks to a friendly school principal. According to this, the cost per student, at a minimum for a child in class 1 is Rs 21,272. The cost could go up to Rs. 29,091 for class 8 students. Going by the statistics here on how much money as been allocated to elementary schools, the expenditure per student would come up to Rs. 21,509. With the average fee fixed for private schools being Rs. 5000-Rs 6000 per child, I would say that there still exists a wide, unjustifiable gap.