MP: Private schools get fee notice on parents’ call

BHOPAL: Parents of students have complained to the MP commission for protection of child rights about the new strategies that private schools have come up with in order to extract consolidated fee instead of tuition fee for the lockdown period.
The government orders clearly stated that the schools will only be able to charge tuition fee from parents for the lockdown period, but parents have alleged that the schools have brought all fee-heads under tuition fee, refusing to give them a fee-break-up.The district education officer took cognisance of the matter and sent notices to the schools that were charging fee under other heads.
“There are some schools that charge the transport fee, mess fee, sports fee, annual fee and other kinds of fee under the 'tuition fee' head only and have refused to provide the parents with any rebate during the lockdown period. The government should put a cap on the amount of tuition fee that the schools can charge from parents else parents will be exploited by the big schools this way,” said Kamal Vishwakarma, president of MP parents’ association.
Taking cognisance of the complaints from parents, the MPCPCR wrote to the district education officer about the issue.
“We have asked the DEO Nitin Saxena to send notices to the schools that were not complying by the government order. It is to be noted that all the private schools can only charge tuition fee from the parents for the lockdown period. No additional fee will be charged by the schools,” said Brijesh Chouhan, member of the MPCPCR.
DEO Nitin Saxena said, “We have sent notices to 4 big schools of the city on the recommendation of the MPCPCR. I have also received also number of complaints from the parents regarding the same. Schools have to ensure that they do not charge any kind of annual fee, mess fee, transportation fee, sports fee etc for the lockdown period else we will have to take strict action against the schools.”