Parents Protest Against Non-Refund of Fees by Private Schools in Noida

Greater Noida: A protest was held at the District Magistrate Gautam Budh Nagar Noida office on Saturday by the parents regarding the non-refund of 15% of the fees.

Most of the private schools have violated the High Court's decision on refunding 15% of the school fees collected during the pandemic.

Sukhpal Singh Toor, the Founder of NCR Parents Association said, "Earlier also a memorandum was submitted to the District Magistrate and information was received from the office that the memorandum has been sent to the District Inspector of Schools, Gautam Buddha Nagar. I met the District School Inspector on April 15. The District School Inspector had assured him that the schools would refund the fees.”

He further added, “Since schools weren’t obeying the order, we were left with no choice but to register our anguish with the media. Due to pressure, a notice was issued to 10 schools on April 18 by the District School Office. The deadline for the notice was April 21. No information has been given to the parents yet on the refund of fees, nor has any action been taken.”

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Sukhpal Singh also asks, “There are more than 300 private schools in Gautam Budh Nagar, but why the notice was issued to only 10 schools? Have the rest of the schools agreed to refund the fees or any separate action is being taken for them? For this, there should be complete transparency with parents.”

The parents have also complained many times to the concerned authorities over pressure from schools to buy books-stationery from a particular shop or school. Notices were also issued for the same but the action taken on it wasn’t made public.

Parents are now protesting through meetings, social media, emails, messages, memorandums and demonstrations etc.

The guardians of Gautam Budh Nagar will soon meet the public representatives and request them to intervene by handing over a memorandum to the Chief Minister.

Manish Kumar, Dipankar Kumar, Himanshu Agarwal, Rakesh Jain, Neetu Jain, Sukhpal Singh Toor etc. participated in the protest.