BENGALURU:Fed up with school managements hiking the fee every academic year, a parents’ group in the city has started an online petition against the hike on change.org.
The petition, which was posted on Wednesday, had nearly 800 signatures by Friday evening. The petition titled, ‘Fee hike every year is a big burden to the parents’, reads: “On every year basis, the school is increasing fees. As recent at this year, the fees is increased by about 20 percent. When you try to contact school staff, they are not able to justify this sudden increase.”
“On an average, the salary of working class is increased by about 8 percent that too on a higher side. How can one support the educational needs when the fee increases by way beyond percentages than the inflation itself. Also to a surprise, there is never any change which we are seeing in any facilities, infrastructure, etc. This practice of increasing the fee on a yearly basis needs to be stopped and the education needs to be made affordable” (sic).
Those who have signed the petition have demanded the government or the boards concerned to mandate that fee is hiked only once in three years. A parent said, “The government should come out with some standard rule where schools must be restricted from hiking fees every year.”
Many parents expressed their helplessness over schools increasing fees every year. “Increasing school fee every year is becoming a burden on parents. The hike has to be less than 10 percent,” said another parent.
Education department hasn’t followed HC order
Though there is a direction from the High Court to the Education Department to fix the fee criterion for private schools, irrespective of the board they belong to, the department has not yet taken any measures in this regard.