BENGALURU: The draft of the proposed fee structure for schools, submitted by the Department of Public Instruction to the High Court, is now facing opposition from several stakeholders including parents, students’ organisations and private school managements.
The parents and students’ organisations say that the policy will increase fees drastically. They say that the government has done this to favour school managements. But, on the other hand, private school managements say that the fee draft is unrealistic.
D Shashi Kumar, General Secretary of the association, said, “The government is regulating the fee without understanding and assessing the present situation. The draft rules are against the order of the Supreme Court dated February 26, 2004, in the special leave petition (Civil) No 265/67/1997 (TMA Pai and others v/s Government of Karnataka and others).”
“In the draft, the government says that for the admission of students to unaided institutions, and to factor in the differential in different geographical locations, it has arrived at 50 per cent (fee increase) for town municipals, 60 per cent for city municipals, 75 per cent for corporations and 100 per cent for BBMP. But, how did the department arrive at different percentages when most expenditures remain the same across the state? Hence, we have an objection to the huge difference in fees between schools in town municipal and BBMP limits,” explained Shashi Kumar.
On Wednesday, the Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka (KAMS) had organised a meeting with the school managements to express their opinions on the draft fee proposal. Representatives from at least 1,900 private school managements were present at the meeting. Mariswamy Reddy, management representative from Sathya High School, Ballari, said, “There should be no differentiation between rural and urban areas while calculating the fees. We are all low budget schools and we charge `7,000 per year for students.”
P M Sathyanarayana of Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial School, Bengaluru South, said, “The state government has prepared the draft fee only to console the court and there is nothing practical about it. Managements need liberty.”
KAMS has decided to submit its set of objections to the government demanding to convene a meeting to voice their concerns.
Protest held
Activists of the Students Federation of India (SFI) staged a protest in front of the office of the Department of Public Instruction and many other organisations joined the stir. They demanded the government not to let school managements fix the fee as that will be a burden on parents from economically poor background.
A parent said, “As this new policy is going to reduce the expenditure for RTE kids, the schools will put that financial burden on other kids. The government should hear the parents’ concerns too.”