Nagpur: With the new academic session all set to commence from the last week of June, members of various Parents Associations assembled at Samvidhan Square (RBI Square) in Nagpur on Sunday afternoon to protest against school fees and demanded that a minimum 50 percent reduction must be done. The parents have started raising questions on why schools across the city were not following the Supreme Court’s (SC) suggestion to reduce fees. A group of parents has gone ahead and started an online petition seeking 50 per cent reduction in fees for the current academic year.
The parents resorted to ‘Thaali Bajaao’ agitation symbolically to draw attention of concerned authorities and school managements towards their demand. Over the last one year, different organisations representing parents have been formed to take up the issue of school fees.
The Parents Associations claimed that the State Government recently has cut the school fees but the schools are recovering full fees from parents. An education activist, Mohd Sharif, said that the State Government has reduced RTE reimbursement by 50 percent because even the government knows that the schools are not incurring as much expenses as before. Similarly, the parents are demanding that a minimum 50% fee reduction must be done by the schools, he demanded.
“The Parents and Teachers’ Associations have authority to fix fees under the Right To Education Act. These rules are not being followed by a single school. The schools are deciding the fees by their own will and parents are being pressured to remit the fees. Those parents who are not in a position to pay the fees, are being handed over TCs,” the agitating parents lamented.
Those who participated in the agitation include Indian Parents Sangh, Vidarbha Parents’ Association, Swami Avdheshanand School Association, and activists of RTE Action Committee. Following the social distaning norm, the agitators formed a human chain and stressed on their demand. The protest was led by Abhishek Jain, Mohd Sharif, Sandeep Agrawal, Arvind Nandgave, Amit Hosting, Bhavani Chaube, Amit Naidu, Mina Tiwari, Girish Pande, Prakash Jaiswal, Pankaj Gulane, Kamal Nampalliwar, Farhad Sheikh, Deepali Ingle, and Mona Chopde.
