Panchkula April 20:
A Memorandum was submitted to the education minister, Haryana, Mr Kanwar pal Gujjar by a deligation led by former Deputy Chief Minister Mr Chander Mohan regarding the exorbitant fee hike made by the private school Institutions situated in Panchkula. Those who accompanied in the deligation included, former president of Municipal Council Panchkula, Ravinder Rawal, congress leaders Shashi Sharma, Vijay Bansal, Priyanka Hooda and Sushama Khanna.
Mr Chander Mohan apprised that in the memorandum the issue regarding steep hike made in the fee structure by the private schools of Panchkula had been highlighted. He said that due to spread of Covid-19 , the nationwide Lockdown was imposed in the country on March 23, 2020 by the prime minister Mr Narender Modi and due to that all educational institutions had been closed down and students had to been forced to study by taking online classes during entire previous academic year and even some of the examinations for various classes were also conducted online.Some examinations were done away and students had been promoted straight away into the next class in previous academic year.To cope with the situation, the parents had to incur a lot of money for purchasing electronic equipments including amar phones and laptop to keep update online to their wards .instead of helping their students to come out of this pandemic phase the respective school management had chosen another way to loot the already financially burdened parents by making exorbitant increase not only in fees structure ,but in other heads also who were already facing mental agony as some parents had lost their jobs. of their jobs due to Covid-19. Various private schools in Panchkula had increased the tuition fee and other charges manifold and even one school had increased tuition fees upto140 per cent in this present academic year starting from 1April, 2021. The parents had been pressurized to deposit the arrears of the rebate given last year immediately and transfer certificates were not being issued to the students who seek admissions in other schools .They had to face a lot of difficulties.
Mr Chander Mohan told the education minister that many senior Congress party leaders raise the issue of exhorbitant fees and other charges hike with the management of the schools, but all in vain. Congress Party tried to approach managements of various schools but all in vain. He pointed out that some concrete suggestions had been given in the memorandum to the education minister which includes to overhaul the complete structure of our education system. The parents should be included in the decision making process where the rights of students and parents could be affected. Most of the schools had been registered under a trust or society act and don’t pay taxes. It was suggested that it should be made mandatory by the government to make account of these institutions public so that transparency could be maintained at all levels. It had come to the notice that payment was not made to the teaching and non-teaching staff during Covid-19 and even defaulted in payment of their salaries to the retrenched staff but even though the schools were adamant to charge full fees for entire previous academic year . The parents were harased and mentally tortured to stop them to fullfill the dreams of their childerns .
He said it had been demanded that schools be directed that they should not prescribed the book published by the private publishers. The preference should be given to the books published by the NCERT and the SCERT for schools affiliated with the CBSE or the Haryana Board of School Education and a criteria should be fixed the school uniform also it had been advised in the memorandum that education department should intervene to redress the unethical of the managements. So that students could get their basic right to get education guaranteed under Art. 21-A of Constitution of India without undue burden on the parents especially in these hard times when service class and businessmen were struggling for their existence.it had been advised to opt mecnisam with regard to keep administrative control on these private schools which has been allotted lands on throwaway prices to build these institutions for providing quality education at affordable fee structures to the children especially to the poor and the residents of this defacto capital city at par with city of Chandigarh where there had been evolve a strict mechanism by the UT Administration to curb the malpractices by private schools situated therein.
