Year-end examinations are not yet round the corner and most teachers haven’t even completed covering the syllabus, but parents in several private schools have already received circulars asking them to pay the fees for the next academic year by mid-February — that is, if they want their child to continue in the same school.
Worse still, many schools are collecting “readmission fees”, which Education Department officials say is unacceptable, and can warrant penalisation.
Every year, schools can levy charges under heads such as tuition, infrastructure, and transport. But managements can charge an admission fee only once, at the time of a child’s enrolment. The readmission fees that schools are charging range from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 40,000, and this has caught parents off-guard.
One parent said that she had raised the issue with the school by writing an email, but had got no response. “My child’s school has insisted that we pay half the amount of the next year’s fees by the first week of February. This also includes readmission fees, and will mean shelling up at least half a lakh rupees. We have not got any prior intimation and mobilising such a huge sum is difficult for middle-class families,” she said.
Another parent of a Class I student in a school in south Bengaluru said she was supposed to give a post-dated cheque for Rs. 42,000 in the first week of February if she wanted her child to continue in the same school for the next academic year. She said it had put an additional burden on the parents. “School managements should ask the fees only after the student completes the current academic year,” she said.
A school management representative whom The Hindu contacted admitted that schools were jumping the gun. But he was quick to add, “With the mushrooming of new private school chains, managements are facing stiff competition and want to secure seats. We have several problems, including stepping up infrastructure and coping with teacher attrition, which is why we are forced to resort to these measures.”
Action
Department officials say that they can initiate action against a school charging readmission fees under Section 39 of the Karnataka Education Act, 1983. Once a parent lodges a complaint, a show-cause notice can be issued against the school. If found guilty of violating department orders, a school can face the threat of withdrawal of recognition.
D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary of the Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka, said schools should not take readmission fees and that fees should be collected at the end of the academic year. “If there is an emergency, then schools can approach the parent-teacher association and pass a resolution to collect fees in the middle of the academic year,” he said.
Meanwhile, K. Anand, Director (Primary), Department of Public Instruction, said that parents could approach the Block Education Officer and register a complaint if school managements were pressurising them to pay fees now for the next academic year. He, too, confirmed that readmission fees were illegal.
Parents can register a complaint with the Block Education Officer if school managements are pressurising them to pay readmission fees and the fees for the next academic year now itself.
K. Anand, Director (Primary), Department of Public Instruction
