Ghaziabad: Private Schools raise fees, residents agitated

The schools are closed since the onset of Covid pandemic, resulting in students taking online classes. However, the schools are still charging full or even increased amount of fees from the parents which has got them upset and agitated. The parents in Ghaziabad have been complaining about the issue but nothing has been done in this regard.

"Children are not availing the facilities for which their parents are paying," says Shivani Jain, National President, All School Parent's Association.

According to the parents, the students are not availing of facilities such as fully air-conditioned classrooms, sports events, dance events and so on. They also say that the schools have cut a lot of costs like electricity, cleaning and so on. This directly means that the schools have comparatively fewer expenses.

On May 5, 2021, the government passed a notice that schools must not charge the students for the expenses they are not paying for during the online classes. Even after this notice was issued, many schools in Ghaziabad refused to follow up and kept the fee structure the same. Schools can only charge for annual composite fees and have to omit annual fees, development fees, sports fees, etc. But no actions were taken by any authorities. Many parent's associations took to social media platforms to raise this issue but did not see any productive actions.

"Government has passed the orders for the private schools to decrease 15% of fees, but even if they're not decreasing it, at least they shouldn't increase it. This year, most of the private schools have increased the fees. All we can do is write a letter to the officials and schools, we did the same but no actions were taken", says Shobhit Jain, father of 2 students of DPS, Ghaziabad.

"The main problem is implementation, government have passed many bills, laws for schools but they are not being implemented", says Rahul Jain, a resident of Ghaziabad whose children are studying in DLF public school, Sahibabad.

During the pandemic, several people lost their jobs. However, schools still demanded full fees which seems unfair to a lot of parents. Many parents were not able to pay the fees so they took action against the arbitrariness of schools. "Many students shifted from a private school to a government school because their parents were not able to pay the high fees private schools were asking for", Shivani Jain says.