Parents question reopening of schools, fee issue reignites

They have also called it a ploy by the state governments to help the lobby with payment of fees before a fresh wave of infections forces another lockdown.

Decision by the Karnataka government to reopen physical classes for students from Monday has made a section of parents and guardians question if the urgency has something to do with the government favouring the powerful lobby of private educational institutions in the state.

Students attend a class as the Karnataka Government allowed to reopen the schools to conduct the classes for 9th-10th and pre-university college in Bengaluru on Monday. (PTI)

They have also called it a ploy by the state governments to help the lobby with payment of fees before a fresh wave of infections forces another lockdown.

“This move to open the schools is purely seen as an attempt to favour the private school managements’ lobby to collect the fee,” Mohammed Shakeel, the president of Voice of Parents said. “The government is concerned about mid-day meals not reaching children, child marriages and child labour, in the event of schools not functioning or not able to provide or children unable to receive online education, this criteria is not applicable to students in private unaided schools. We cannot be made scapegoats in the hands of private schools most of who are charging unlawful fees,” Shakeel added.

Physical classes for students in higher grades have resumed in many parts of the country which also points to the failure of the government in bridging technological divide, experts said.

The government appointed technical advisory committee (TAC), in its recommendations submitted to authorities on June 22, argued that education is the fundamental right of the child and stated that reopening physical schools would optimise learning, physical and mental health as well as for nutritional aspects of children.

“Any further delay in school reopening may push children into malnutrition, child labour, child marriage, child trafficking, begging etc., making their condition further Worse,” according to the report.

According to the TAC, there are 23,838,995 people below the age of 18 in the state with an estimated population of 70,259,592, accounting for around 34%.

In July, S Suresh Kumar, the then primary and secondary education minister had stated that around 9.3 million students out of the total 10.05 million across private and public schools in Karnataka, have been accounted for in terms of access to devices, internet, TV, radio and even email.

Of the 9.3 million who have been accounted for, only 5,859,907 have smartphones/tablets while around 3,127,524 don’t have any access to such devices, leaving around 40% of the students out of the system for almost an entire year. Further, there are just 5,134,386 students who have access to the internet while 3,779,965 students do not have access to the internet, rendering the exercise of online classes as a redundant practice for these children, mostly from rural and backward regions of the state, Hindustan Times had reported on July 2.

BC Nagesh, Karnataka’s minister for primary and secondary education on Sunday said that the government could not teach all students online “no matter how much it tried”.

The gap in such basic necessities also highlights the inequitable distribution of resources in a state that prides its prowess in technology and arguably one of the most industrious in the country.

Karnataka has seen parents associations take private schools to court over the demand of payment of full fees.

The two sides have locked horns and even resulted in a show of strength of sorts when both carried out protest marches in Bengaluru last year.

Shashi Kumar, the state convenor of the Karnataka Private School Managements, Teaching and Non-Teaching Staff Coordination Committee (KPMTCC) on Monday told Hindustan Times that the decision to reopen schools was backed by the government, experts, doctors and even the members of the Covid-19 task force.

Kumar, also a member of the state task force on Covid, said that it was a unanimous decision to reopen schools from primary sections but the government has resumed only classes above class 9.

“Our only regret is that the recommendation we had given as a task force; those recommendations are not completely implemented. We are concerned only on the quality of implementation,” Kumar said on Monday.

He added that it was a “wrong” notion that the government heeded to demands by private schools to reopen.

He said that the bulk or nearly 95% of all private schools were budget ( ₹10000- ₹30,000 per year) and have minimum school fees payment and poor admissions.

He added that the bulk of the parents are fighting not to pay school fees but school managements are finding it difficult to operate.

“Except a few hundred schools which are in demand, like National Public School and others, parents of those schools have paid fees in full,” Kumar said.

He even added that several parents are yet to clear even the partly arrears of previous years.