Mar 26 2023 6:25PM
Shimla, Mar 26 (UNI) State Student Guardian Forum demanded the state government to enact law and regulatory commission in the current assembly session to curb the arbitrary loot and monopoly of fee hike, prices of books and uniforms of private schools.
Convenor of Forum Vijendra Mehra and co-convenor Vivek Kashyap have demanded the state government to bring a law to form a regulatory commission to stop the arbitrary loot of private schools, huge fees, huge increase in the prices of books and uniforms.
He expressed anger over the increase in the fees of private schools by about 20 percent beside 30 percent hike in the prices of school uniform and books this year. They termed it as the failure of the education department as private schools of Shimla town increased fee from Rs. 50 thousand to 60 thousand rupees. Every year 20 to 30 percent more fees are being collected from the students while students are not getting anything in the name of basic facilities.
They also alleged that about three thousand rupees are being collected under miscellaneous charges head, for which no account is maintained. By selling uniform and books from shortlisted shops private school managements are getting commission from middleman, depriving the parents of the discount of thousands of rupees they could get. SDF said this is in violation of NCERT, SCERT, CBSE and MHRD guidelines. They alleged that Private school managements are looting directly from the parents, but the education department and the state government are mute spectator.
They warned the state government that if the positive action was not taken the Student Guardian Forum would open a front against state, education department and private schools. SGF appealed the Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu to take initiative to implement the law to regulate private schools so that seven lakh students and ten lakh parents of the state could get justice.
He said that due to the failure and connivance of various state governments, private schools have been continuously working with absolute monopoly as even during the Corona period, apart from tuition fees, private schools management was busy collecting annual charges, computer fees, smart class room, miscellaneous, cares, sports, maintenance, infrastructure, building fund, transport and all other types of funds.
They alleged that private schools are openly violating the guidelines of the Ministry of Human Resource Development of the year 2014 and the Department of Education dated December 5, 2019, on the matter of fee collection, and are either ignoring the role of the parents’ general meeting to fix the fee and other charges. According to the guidelines of the Education Department, PTAs have not been constitued in 99 percent schools and dummy PTAs are working in these schools. Defying court orders Private schools are still collecting admission fees through the back door channel and annual charges.SDF demanded the state government to immediately enact a law and constitute a regulatory commission to regulate fees, syllabus and admission process in private schools.
