A group of parents in Greater Noida (West) on Sunday demonstrated against the “arbitrary” hike in fees of private schools and flashed roadside shoes in a symbolic gesture to highlight inflation.
Among those who took to the street to polish shoes were parents who are professional chartered accountants, managers and engineers in private firms as they protested the “arbitrariness” of schools in raising fees despite the Fee Regulation Act. The protest comes in the wake of an Uttar Pradesh government order allowing private schools to hike fees earlier this month.
The protesters said that due to inflation, the problems of the parents have increased a lot and the increase in school fees is a double whammy for them. They staged a dharna from 11 am under the banner of NCR Guardians Association and Noida Extension Flat Owners Welfare Association (NEFOVA). NCR Parents Association president Sukhpal Singh Toor wondered what compelled the government that “schools succumbed to the mafia”. Toor said, “When the Uttar Pradesh government had announced before the elections that school fees would not be increased this year, why is there this order to increase the fees after the elections are over.”
NEFOWA President Abhishek Kumar said the “arbitrariness” of schools is not ending. He said that in the COVID-19 pandemic, when the waiving of school fees in private schools was announced in many states, a similar announcement was expected in UP, but nothing happened in the state. “Schools charge full fees from parents despite running online classes, while the bye-laws of the school say ‘no profit, no loss’,” Kumar said. Vikas Katiyar, general secretary of NCR Parents’ Association, said that some schools have increased the fees by adding ‘building fee’ to the tuition fee.
Katiyar said, “The cost of daily necessities has soared in recent times, the entire budget of the common man’s household has been ruined and the school fee hike will break his back.” The protesters claimed that no action has been taken against any school that has not followed laws that allow such institutions to make public their income and expenditure accounts, share details of salaries paid to teachers. compelled to do so etc. The protesters appealed to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to withdraw the order allowing schools to hike fees “so that children get the right to education at a minimum fee”.
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