The problem with education

I recently went to a school. The school principal had approached an organisation I'm affiliated with (why no names? Because I don't want anybody getting in trouble.) for funding for a classroom. The school itself is fantastic. It provides free education (yes absolutely free) to around 600 kids. From 1st to 7th. The school is what is called a government aided school. This means that the government agrees to pay all the salaries of all the teachers and probably give them some kind of pension (I'm not sure about the pension) in return the school agrees to not charge any fees whatsoever. On the surface this sounds like a good idea as kids are getting free education and the government doesn't have to manage all these schools. But who will pay other bills, like electricity, water, staff wages, maintenance and hundreds of other expenses. Since the school has no income it must be pretty tough. I kept asking the principal where they get the money to maintain and improve the school. And they said donations. But it seemed a little difficult to believe that the schools are asking people for donations to even pay their electricity bills. It was only later that someone told me (this is unconfirmed) that since government teaching jobs are so much in demand teachers are willing to pay upto 5 lakhs to get the job. This money is then put back into the school to maintain it. What a strange and convoluted way of running things. I was thinking it would be so much easier to charge the kids a nominal fee and use that money to run the school, but ofcourse then the teachers wouldn't be able to get their government wages, which they already payed good money for.