Several private schools in the city are withholding the mid-semester marks cards of students whose parents have not paid the fees for the second term for the 2020-21 academic year.
A mother of a class VIII student, who is enrolled in a private school in south Bengaluru, said only some children in the class have received marks cards for the online examinations conducted in October while the others were marked as absent for all the examinations. “The school management has circulated the marks of all the students to the entire class, and it is really embarrassing for those children whose parents have not paid the fees,” she said.
The father of a 13-year-old girl, who studies in a CBSE affiliated school in east Bengaluru, said that they are finding it difficult to pay fees due to the economic fallout of the pandemic. “I have lost my job and somehow managed to pay the fees for the first term. I will definitely not be able to pay the fees for the second term immediately,” he said.
Many parents, whose students are enrolled in that school, have reportedly petitioned the management to give them some more time to pay the fees and release the marks cards. “But our request was refused,” said a parent.
While parents are demanding leniency, school managements said they had no choice but to take such stringent action as they do not have the funds to pay teachers and other employees.
D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary of Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka, said that a majority of families have not paid the tuition fees, leaving schools in the lurch. “We will not provide further learning process for the defaulters,” he said.
Officials from the Department of Public Instruction said that parents can lodge complaints if school managements were resorting to such practices. “We will issue a show cause notice to such schools and seek an explanation before initiating action against them,” an official said.
