Parents allege fleecing by private schools in admissions

With the commencement of the new academic session, middle-class parents, who are seeking admission for their children in kindergarten classes in private schools, are a harassed lot. It has become difficult for them to get their children admitted to private schools. Instances have been reported wherein hefty fee is being demanded by the authorities of private schools from parents to give admission to their wards.

In the absence of any check by the state government, many private schools are demanding between Rs 30,000 and Rs 50,000 admission fee for nursery and Class I on the pretext that their institutions are “English medium and provide quality education to students”.

Parents demanded that the state government should come up with a legislation for regulating admissions and fee structure of private schools in Himachal Pradesh by appointing a regulatory authority so that they could be saved from fleecing by such institutions. Surprisingly, teachers serving in government schools are also reluctant to send their children to government-run institutions because of lack of quality education and other facilities. This has resulted in high dropout rate in government schools this year. It may be recalled that successive governments, which ruled Himachal Pradesh, have been making tall claims about rapid improvement in the standard of the basic education in state-run schools. However, at present, no perceptible qualitative change is visible to convince parents to get their wards admitted in government schools.

A senior official of the Education Department said at present, there was no law to regulate the admission process and fee structure of privately managed schools in Himachal like Delhi and Tamil Nadu. He said in the present scenario, the department was helpless to come to the rescue of affected parents. He said until the state government formed a legislation, private schools would continue to fleece parents.