Management of Shayona International School faced parents’ ire for proposing a steep hike in school fee; parents against sending children to school
Parents in Ghatlodia took to street on Wednesday to protest arbitrary fee hike by Shayona International School when the school management didn’t pay heed to their demand of rolling back the hike. The agitating parents have decided to not send their children to school until the school withdraw its decision.
A worried parent, Suresh Acharya, said, “In three years, the fees has gone up from Rs 8,800 to Rs 14,800. Until they roll back the hike, we will not send our children to school.”
“How can a middle class families like us afford such arbitrary fee hike? Our salaries increase only by Rs 600 per year. How can a fee-hike of Rs 6,000 be affordable to us?” asked Harshad Chaudhary whose two children study at the school.
‘Various means of extracting money’
Bhavik Shah said, “When I tried to meet the authorities, I was asked to get lost. I was told that if I had any issue, I should just take the leaving certificate of my child.”
“The school has been taking money on some or other pretext. The annual day event was recorded in a set of four CDs which we had to buy for Rs 240. Who doesn’t know that a DVD for Rs 20 is available in the market?” he added.
An army personnel, Sunil Kumar, said, “The authorities said that the increase has been introduced as they are set to follow CBSE. Where are the facilities for which this kind of money is being asked for?”
“Even on annual function day, we had to pay Rs 300 just to enter the campus,” said Nidhi Modi, a protesting parent.
‘My child can’t speak English’
A majority of parents admitted their wards to Shayona International as they wanted their kids to be well conversant in English. “My child is in class 8 but cannot speak one sentence in English. What’s the point then in sending our child to a CBSE English medium school?” said Aarti Patel.
“My kid studies in senior KG. She is supposed to fill worksheets which are checked and submitted. My child did not submit her worksheets entire year but got A+. How’s that possible?” said another parent. “No attention is paid on the homework. In fact, we have to correct the wrong answers of our children for which they even get stars.”
‘We raised the fee in two parts’
When contacted, school’s managing trustee Suresh Patel said, “We cannot do anything about fee hike because it was necessary to improve the school’s standard. There is only one option that we cut down on facilities. The parents can decide what they want,” said Patel.
Principal Dolly Pathak said: “We were supposed to increase the complete fee hike last year itself but we thought we should relax it by raising it in two parts. 25 per cent fee was raised last year.”
No comments:
Post a Comment