Parents Associations against High Charges by Schools united

Fri, May 5, 2017 at 6:09 PM

Started media info campaign from a nationwide platform 

From New Delhi Press Club:

We had created a nationwide platform for all the activists working against the commercialization of the education back in February 2017. But in many states, the parents' associations have been actively working for the several years on these issues. We have studied all the aspects of this gigantic problem. Some have staged peaceful protests, some have filed cases before the courts and while pursuing our aim we have been getting tremendous support from the media also. Accordingly, we have decided to keep informing the media about the details of all such developments periodically i.e. various aspects of this gigantic problem, solutions we have in our mind and our actual field works either by way of launching protests and filing cases before courts.

Discussions at today’s press conference:

 A) Main aspects of the problems-

1) Anubha Sahai from IWPA said that there is no uniform law for education all over the nation. Some states like Maharashtra have comparatively effective law whereas states like Madhya Pradesh and Union Territory Chandigarh have no law to curb commercialization of education at all.

2)  Gurpreet Kaur from Chandigarh Parents Association said that though there are comparatively effective laws present in few states no implementation of such laws has been followed e.g. law to put behind the bar for 3 years for an offender collecting capitation fee exists since as back as 1988 in Maharashtra but it has not been implemented despite the fact that education department itself has mentioned in its hundreds of reports that many schools have collected illegal fees. Similarly, in the state of Punjab, the government and the administration have totally failed to implement refund orders from the schools which were decided by the Fee Regulatory Committee appointed by the Punjab & Haryana High Court. These refund orders are in corers of rupees. Even the schools continue to charge exorbitant amount in the form of annual charges, readmission charges, development fund, activity charge, computer charges, smart class charges and other charges.

3) Sunil Verma of Dwarka Parents Association said that most brutal method used by the schools is removing the child from the school for nonpayment of fees. All the incidents we have seen in past few months are those where schools have removed children for want of illegal payments only. Many schools resort to mental punishment to the students who are debarred from attending classes and are made to sit in the library whole day long.

4) Manoj Sharma of Haryana Abhibhavak Ekta Manch said that the schools force the children to purchase books & uniforms from some specified shops who sell these at much higher rates. The schools change the books frequently so that the previous books cannot be reused and schools & the shopkeepers make the huge profit.

5) Gautam Vohra from Faridabad Parents Association said that schools are not following mandatory requirements under RTE act e.g. submitting their audit reports every year under Form II which they fear would expose their actual profiteering.

B) Our strategy so far planned and implemented-

1) Nitin Goyal, president of Chandigarh Parents Association informed that we have created India Wide Parents Association, a nationwide platform to unite all the activists working against the commercialization of the education. We do provide legal and other assistance to any activists or parents approaching us from all over the nation. Recently we had staged protests at CBSE and met NCPCR representative who immediately took cognizance of our complaint and as soon as their orders of inquiries were passed schools immediately restored the admission of the expelled children. Some of our activists have worked at local levels also and have successfully restored the expelled students whereas incidents where errant schools have refused to restore the expelled students we are initiating legal proceedings as well as criminal and civil actions not only against the school authorities but against public authorities too who are deliberately neglecting to perform their statutorily binding duties.

2) Narender Munjal from Faridabad Parents Association said that we have also prepared legal drafts and same shall be filed before various courts and commissions all over the nation against illegal fee collections by the school authorities and also against the negligent public authorities. We will also pray to prosecute such negligent public authorities.

Swaroop Singh from Ludhiana all School Parents Association informed that “Today we met the members of NCPCR to discuss on pending issues since many months related to child harassment and corporal punishment and request them to resolve the pending disputes immediately. SCPCR across India has failed to perform their duties.”

Manjit Singh from Ludhiana said that we demand the central and state governments to review the minority status granted to these institutions after the enactment of RTE Act. To conduct a thorough enquiry to verify whether they are imparting education to minority children or not and to verify the records as to how many children from minority background are studying in these institutions and to cancel the minority status of these schools which are taking undue advantage of this status granted to these institutions and also take criminal action against these institutions which are targeting children They are misusing the  minority status to escape from their obligations under RTE and other laws. All provisions of RTE must be applicable to minority institutions.

Rajiv Sharma from Ludhiana In the past three months since the formation of IWPA we have been successful with few practical difficulties and are able to contribute for the society. We plan to spread this movement further and request your popular newspaper and news channel to publish/broadcast the same.