Nagpur: With new academic year, parents are staring at severe financial as private schools across the city have started charging fees for the facilities students are not going to avail, at least during the initial months of the academic year when teaching-learning is taking place online. With no other options at sight, distress parents in Second Capital of the State has just one question – Sans authentic classroom experience, does it still make sense for schools administration to seek the same tuition fees?
While many schools have retained the fee structure for the academic year 2020-2021, parents said schools have charged fees for use of libraries, laboratories, sports, and gymnasium facilities, among others, that students are unable to access. The move has brought financial burden on parents, who are already facing pay-cuts owing to global pandemic.
Speaking to Nagpur Today, Amitabh Nigam, Smart School & Virtual Classroom Consultant asserted on what should be an ideal future plans for schools will be benefitted for both administration and parents.
Amitabh Nigam
“I believe there’s need of an Advisory Board, constituting doctors who would advise about the ideal numbers of classes feasible for a child to take up on basis of his age and other health factors. Apart from that schools should operate on per hour charge, as they are taking online classes,” he said.
Asserting on per hour charges, Nigam, Ex National Business Head(Government Business) for Logitech Unified Communications Business Division further elaborated, virtual classroom cost per hour is normally calculated as follows:
X) Per Hour Internet Usage cost wherein maximum 300MB of data is used per hour on teachers end which is approximately Rs 5 per hour.
Y) We can quantify teachers based on their salaries and further divide it into days and hours.
Suppose a teacher gets Rs 25,000 Salary per month where he / she teaches for 25 days and 5 lectures a day so his/her per hour cost is Rs 200 per hour we can add an Principal and other back office administration cost as 50% more i.e. the per hour teacher cost becomes Rs 300 per hour.
Z) Now let’s assume school takes the laptop and a digital screen on rent for these digital lecture so that cost is around
Rs 1000 per hour.
Total Cost of One Hour Virtual Classroom =X+Y+Z
= Rs 1305 per hour.
So if a class has minimum 20 students per class(Incase Class has more than 20 then the costs will further decrease)
It’s Rs 65 per student per hour
If a student does 5 hours of daily classes for 25 days the Tution Fee for Virtual Classes should be Rs 8125 per month only.This should be ratified by Deputy Director for Schools till the time normal schooling resumes. Which would be a support to already suffering parents who have had severe losses in their jobs/businesses etc, he suggested.
“Apart from that no fee should be charged as usual for food, lodging & boarding, travel, electricity and another infrastructures. If School wants to charge they should come up why they are charging,” Nigam contended.
