Schools cannot remove students from online classes citing non-payment of fee, ordered divisional commissioner Pawan Sharma after hearing the plea of parents and giving an ear to schools on Monday.
Parents had approached Sharma under the campaign ‘Jago Palak Jago’ against schools pressuring to pay complete fee while only online classes are being held. Troubled by school, a parent of Agrawal Public School had approached CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan by stopping his car midway.
Following the incident, Chouhan ordered divisional commissioners to hear parent’s plea and solve the issues. Hence, group of parents representing different schools met with the commissioner and also staged a protest demanding guidelines for online classes and fee charged for the time being.
Further, discussing issues, advocate Chanchal Gupta brought CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) affiliation bye laws, which states that every school must have reserve fund for emergency.
On which, Sharma demanded schools to disclose their reserve fund and use it in these difficult times to bear expenses.
Other than Sharma, joint director education department, district education officer, and Principal of Agarwal Public School were also present in the meeting. Representing parents from different associations, Gupta, Kanchan Masand, Siddharth Tandon, Anurodh Jain, Ramakant Sharma and Ritesh Aggarwal were present in the meeting.
Parents raised these issues
1. Determine the appropriate fees for the online class. Currently, the fees that are being sought by the schools are being sought according to the Physical Class Study which is unfair.
2. Due financial constraint and economic slowdown, some parents are unable pay the fees. In such an instance, schools are pressurising parents by striking child’s name and removing them from online class.
3. Schools have a provision to keep a reserve fund for emergency situations according to the rules of recognition, that reserve fund should be used for school operations and teachers' salaries at this time.
4. Schools should be given exemption in property tax, electricity bills, permits and RTO tax by the government. The benefit of which should be given by the school in tuition fees.
5. A management committee should be created in the school in which a representative should be selected by the lottery system.
Commissioner has assured that:
1. Every possible effort will be made to determine the appropriate tuition fees according to the education imparted in the online class.
2. Directed the District Education Officer that all schools should be directed immediately that no child be denied online education or examination due to fees.
3. Appropriate action will be taken by extracting information about the rules of the Reserve Fund of Schools.
4. Efforts will be made to exempt schools from property tax and other possible charges.