The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic last year not only affected economic activities but also education. While the nationwide lockdown imposed in March last year to curb the spread of infections led to closure of educational institutes, many of the institutes quickly adapted, shifting to online classes within months. While many schools across the country were reopened for children after the first wave of COVID-19 receded, the second wave in March-May this year led to schools again shutting down and classes moving online. Despite this, 63 per cent of parents say that the school their children go to has increased fees this year, a survey by community social media platform LocalCircles has found. The survey, conducted to understand what Indian parents think about the overall fee structure implemented by their children's schools for the academic year 2021-22, received more than 26,000 responses from citizens residing in 302 districts of India, with 48 per cent respondents from metro or tier 1 locations, 28 per cent from tier 2 locations and 24 per cent from tier 3, tier 4 and rural locations. 62 per cent of the respondents were men, while 38 per cent were women. While 33 per cent of citizens said there has been a more than 20 per cent fee increase from 2020-21, 23 per cent said school fee has seen a 10-20 per cent increase during the period. 7 per cent of parents surveyed said there was a 0-10 per cent fee increase from 2020-21. Furthermore, only 1 per cent of parents said schools reduced fees by 10-20 per cent, and just 2 per cent said there was more than 20 per cent fee reduction, LocalCircles said. There were also 22 per cent citizens who said that there was no fees increase from 2020-21, while 12 per cent did not have an opinion.
Also read: Flipkart removes single-use plastic across its 70+ fulfilment centres A ruling by Supreme Court in May this year provided some relief to students and parents by ordering a minimum 15% per cent reduction in school fees. "The court stated that the collection of this 15 per cent would be 'a case of profiteering and commercialisation by school management'. Additionally, the school management is not permitted to debar students from attending online or physical classes or withhold the results of students if they fail to pay the fees," LocalCircles said. Besides, Uttar Pradesh government had recently asked schools not to hike the fees for academic session 2021-22, and said if any school has charged a hiked fee for the new session, the additional amount will be adjusted in the coming months. "With education being a state subject, the survey also tried to gather citizens' pulse about the effectiveness of their respective state governments to top the increase in school fees in light of the current circumstances," the platform said. The survey asked parents to rate the actions of their state government to regulate fee increases by schools during the pandemic. About 65 per cent of parents said their state government was inactive or ineffective in regulating school fee increase during the pandemic. While 6 per cent citizens said their state government's actions were "effective", 23 per cent said the actions were "somewhat effective" in regulating school fees. 41 per cent of parents said the state government's action was "ineffective", while 24 per cent said the government did not take any action at all. 6 per cent of surveyed parents did not have any opinion on the question. "State governments must ensure that private schools in their respective state adhere to the Supreme Court ruling and introduce a 15 per cent reduction in school fees. Schools, on the other hand, must find ways to optimise physical facility and maintenance costs till the time physical classes are ready to resume, which at this point looks likely for most schools only in 2022," LocalCircles said. The platform claims it enables citizens and small businesses to escalate issues for policy and enforcement interventions and enables government to make policies that are citizen and small business centric.
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