The Department of Primary and Secondary Education on Friday announced that for the 2020-2021 academic year, school managements will be allowed to collect only 70 per cent of the tuition fees collected last academic year. It has stated that schools will not be allowed to collect any other fees.
Primary and Secondary Education Minister S. Suresh Kumar made this announcement at a press conference. He said that this will be applicable to managements affiliated to State as well as Central boards. In another important decision, the department has stated that if parents have already paid the full year’s fee, the school management should either refund the fee or adjust it with the next year’s fee. The Minister said that parents should be given the option of paying the fee in two or three instalments. He also said that the State government had the authority to prescribe fees based on the Karnataka Education Act ,1983, and also under certain clauses in the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897.
The move comes following pressure from parents and parents’ associations who have been demanding the intervention of the State government in reducing the fees for this academic year. Several schools had blocked online classes as the parents had not paid the fees. Parents had said that many of them were in financial distress as they had lost jobs or faced salary cuts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
S.R. Umashankar, Principal Secretary of the department, said that the tuition fee of school managements would cover the salaries of their teaching and non-teaching staff and also included library, sports and laboratory fee. He said that this academic year, schoolsw ould not be allowed to take donation or charge the optional fees for extracurricular activities such as transport or swimming fees.
The Minister justified the decision and stated that schools did not conduct offline classes from June to December 2020 and a lot of their recurring expenditure was reduced. He said that the decision was taken after the Commissioner for Public Instruction (CPI) had several rounds of meetings with different stakeholders including parents and school managements. If parents have any grievances against the school management, they can approach the District Education Regulatory Authority (DERA) in order to get relief.
