Many schools across the State are relieved following the Madras High Court’s decision permitting schools to collect 40% of the fees by the end of August. Schools have remained shut since March in Tamil Nadu and many private schools have voiced concerns over the last few months about their inability to pay staff salaries and meet other expenses.
“After the judgment, we’ve seen many parents, who are in a position to be able to pay the fees, coming forward and pay the first installment. Ever since we began online classes for children, we have been appealing to parents to come forward and help the school if they are able to and now we expect these numbers to rise,” said Ashok Shankar, general secretary, CBSE Schools Management Association.
Mr.Ashok said that the primary focus for schools would be on staff salaries. “Newly established schools or schools that have been functioning for less than five years will have debts that need to be looked at as well,” he said. He, however, said that a majority of the schools would consider and exempt parents who were financially unstable or had faced a setback during the lockdown. “These concerns can be looked into and verified by the schools,” he added.
The 40% of the fees that schools have been permitted to collect is that of the fee fixed for the 2019-20 academic year as the fee is yet to be fixed by the Private Schools Fee Determination Committee for the 2020-21 academic year.
The fee committee has on July 14, written to all Chief Educational Officers instructing them to inform all recognised private institutions other than CBSE and ICSE schools to submit a proposal to the committee to fix the fees for 2020-21,2021-22 and 2022-23 by September 25.
Waive tax, payments on vehicles
Schools, however, say that they are still being expected to pay tax, insurance and other payments for their vans and buses though they used the vehicles since March.
“We have been appealing to the government to waive our payments on this till the end of the year but no steps have been taken so far,” said K.R. Nandakumar, State general secretary, Tamil Nadu Nursery, Primary, Matriculation, Higher Secondary and CBSE schools association.
Mr. Nandakumar said that while they welcomed the decision to be able to collect an installment of the fees, smaller institutions and primary schools in particular would continue to face a tough time.
“Unless there is some clarity about when schools are going to be reopened or even the syllabus reduction planned by the State government, smaller schools are going to find it tough to convince parents to pay the fees,” he said.
Members of the association are currently in talks as to how they can go about the process and speak to the parents about the developments as well.
Following the court order, a few schools have begun to send messages to the parents, asking them to pay 40% of the fees by the end of august. “Forty per cent is roughly how much a school usually collects for the first term of the academic year. At the end of the day, it boils down to the relationship the school has maintained with the parents. This will determine if the process of fee collection can be smoothly carried out over the next month,” said the management committee member of a private school.
Parents, however, want schools to exercise restraint while asking them to pay fees. S. Arumainathan, president of the Tamil Nadu Students Parents Welfare Association, said that schools must consider genuine concerns from parents who had been financially hit. “Their children should not be denied access to books or online classes. Schools have been also saying that they are yet to get a full reimbursement from the government for RTE admissions and parents of these children should not be pressured as well,” he added.
