Coronavirus induced lockdown has brought many changes in our lives, from going out to just buy essential commodities to studying online. But, the digital mode of education has come up with a few implications. From businessmen to parents, everyone is under a financial crunch. When schools decided to start teaching online under the given circumstances, parents' raised their voices not to pay fees to the school during the lockdown period. The matter has been into the limelight for quite a while now, parents moved to the High Court to seek stay on the fee as classes were just online, no such utility of the school was in use. But, the High Court refused to entertain parents' association's plea and said schools are entitled to collect admission and tuition fee both.
However, this didn't go well with the parents' and they moved to the Supreme Court. But, it also denied entertaining their plea on school fees, from different states, seeking directions to the Centre and state governments to direct all private unaided/aided schools not to charge fees for April-July or till the commencement of physical classes.
The PIL filed by petitioners, parents' association in 9 states, also sought directions to the Centre and state governments to direct schools to only charge proportionate fee based on actual expenditure on online classes till the commencement of normal classes. The petitioners contended that the Punjab and Haryana High Court has allowed schools to charge hiked fees.
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True Scoop launched a campaign #EducationFirst to gather the notion of 3 stakeholders of schools i.e. management, teachers, and parents. Here, we bring you an exclusive interview with Mrs. Richa Mahendru, Teacher, MGN Public School, Jalandhar, over #SchoolFeeRow. Mrs. Mahendru opined that schools are bound to collect fee for the lockdown period as parents were already prepared to pay fee for the upcoming academic session. If parents are facing any problem in paying the entire amount at once, they can tell the school administration and can deposit it in a deferred way.
She also added that teachers' efforts in delivering the lessons have increased manifold. They are keeping children busy for quite some time during the unprecedented crisis but, parents are not ready to put themselves in teachers' shoes, parents are disturbing the monetary cycle.
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