Hyderabad: Government’s silence on new fee rules irks parents

Hyderabad : Parents of several corporate schools are clueless about who they should talk to in the state education department or school education department regarding the unilateral decisions to introduce ECS system by some schools including Chirec public school.

On April 23 2020, the state education department on twitter thanked parents for their feedback on the fee collections by the schools. But after that they had been silent.

Speaking to The Hans India, S Sridevi (name changed) parent of a prominent corporate school in Nallagandla said, "I have tried to reach out to the state education secretary, Director, school education department and the District Education Officer (DEO) but there was no response from them.

She said she wanted to complain against the corporate schools which have introduced a new scheme for fee collection and were conducting themselves like running non-banking finance companies roping in third parties. she added.

Expressing his experience with the school and the education officials, Saibaba (name changed), whose child is studying in Class IX in a corporate school near Suchitra, expressed his anguish saying, "The school authorities are hellbent on implementing what they say and we have to pay whatever they say. The officials don't respond. In some cases, the local mandal level education officials were even rude to the parents and asked why we admitted our children in a private school when we cannot afford the fee. He said here the question is not of affordability but rules and regulations and the role and responsibility of the education department. He said the officials are silent perhaps because their children also study in such schools. This is also must be the reason for the schools taking parents for granted.

Efforts of The Hans India, trying to reach the State Education Secretary and State School Education Director also went in vain.

It may be mentioned here that the State government had earlier promised to come up with a fee regulation committee for the schools following litigation in the state high court. However, the cabinet sub-committee assigned to do the job had only finalised implementing the English medium but has not come up with any finality on the fee regulation.

It was against this backdrop the schools took advantage of the silence of both the state government and the education department introducing a new scheme of collection and financing school fees in the corporate schools.