No School, No Fees - Everything you should know

No school, no fees – everything you should know

As the second wave of the deadly virus, Corona, raises its ugly head, there are talks about schools again being shut. And therefore I’m more than just obliged to talk about the No school, no fees campaign.

The campaign had created much hullabaloo over whether schools should charge fees from students or not. This year again when there are chances of schools getting shut are we prepared for it? Is the big debate over?

India shut its schools and other educational institutions for around 32 Crore students across the nation as we went into lockdown on 25th March 2020. In the aftermath of this lockdown, schools across the nation began scheduling online classes. Schools across the land went on with the same routine. But around mid-June, there rose an issue wherein the students whose parents defaulted school fee payments were denied access to these online classes. Schools asked students to clear their fee and share the receipt with the school administration in order to continue with the class.

Citing an incident in Bhopal where parents of students started a campaign “No school, no fees” when the government gave an order to stop classes for pre-primary and primary schools. Parents in unison stood against school authorities and asked them to scrap off any fee other than tuition fee while schools charged the whole fee of lab, mess, electricity, sports, transport and others masked as tuition fee. Schools on the other hand gave justification for the cost incurred during the lockdown to schedule classes.

As we know, education is a matter of the concurrent list and therefore states can take their own decision while central govt. can intervene if needed. Bombay high court released an advisory resolution where it stated – no fee hike for the academic year 2020-21, schools should offer monthly, quarterly fee payment options for AY 2019-20 and 2020-21, if possible, schools should propose to deduct fees for facilities not used, parents should be offered an online facility for fee payment. Another incident happened in north Kolkata during May for the same contentious issue where parents demanded no hike for 2020-21 AY; schools steps- some have refrained from hikes, others are examining proposals but they fear this can impact payment of staff.

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Transport fee became the biggest concern for parents. Parents demanded that there is no reason why one should pay for transport when there is no school. Some parents said they should be charged one-fourth of transport fees. Schools’ take on the same – have to maintain a fleet of vehicles and pay staffs, even during the lockdown. Schools majorly face the challenge of maintaining the infrastructure and hence the charges.

In Punjab & Haryana, the high court said, “all schools irrespective of whether they offered online classes or not, during the lockdown, are entitled to collect the tuition fee and admission fee; aggrieved parents to approach regulatory body under section 7 of the Punjab Regulation of Fee of Un-aided Educational Institutions Act, 2016”. Schools were advised to work out their actual expense incurred under the annual charge for the period the school remained closed.

Parents from 8 states had approached Supreme Court seeking school fees’ regulation to bring regulatory mechanism for fees in private schools during the corona virus-induced lockdown but there has been no judgement from the Supreme Court on this issue yet.

While parents still struggle with this issue and the school authorities cite their own problems students have been left helpless. There are many who have suffered academic losses given that they had no access to the online class. Who should the students fight? In this much chaotic situation who should the students turn to? Should we blame the govt? For exercising nationwide lockdown? Should we blame the economy for crashing this bad only to cause job losses and hence little or no savings at all? Or should we blame the school authorities for ranting infrastructure maintenance cost when their staffs have reported issues of low wages?

It is high time we pull our socks and combat this menace at hand before “Miss Corona, our cold stranger stalks over the country, touching people and infecting them with her fingers made of ice”.