By Manjima Dhakal
Kathmandu, Aug. 5: Students have not been to schools for almost five months because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the guardians are not free from the burden of paying school fees of their children although they have been staying home for five months.
The schools, of late, have started forcing guardians to pay fees of grade 11 and 12 even for the time of closure of the schools. From this act of schools, now, the guardians of 11 and 12 graders have become stunned.
Private schools are asking fees from guardians and even exerting pressure on the senior level students to pay fee for the months when they had not been to schools due to lockdown.
The schools are found charging all twelve months’ fee for grade 11 and grade 12 students though the students have attended the classes only for eight months due to pandemic. A guardian of grade 11 student of United Academy said the school was asking all 12 months’ fee with them which was not logical.
According to the guardian, it is shameful to ask fee of all twelve months even though the schools have remained close for five months.
A student of DAV Sushil Kediya School said that the school started asking fee even from them along with their guardians, which is shameful. She blamed that her school has only a worry to collect the fees rather than retaining students for uture.
A guardian of Uniglobe College, Kathmandu, expressed his dissatisfaction that representatives of different organisations along with students’ unions speak only about fee from grade one to grade 10 and they are not speaking about the students of grade 11 and 12.
Durga Thapa, a teacher teaching Economics at grade 11 and 12 said they are not getting salary since starting of lockdown. Thapa further said it is not the matter of their concern whether the school collected fees from guardians or not, but they have to get salary as per the contract.
Suparbhat Bhandari, chairperson of Guardians Federation, said, it was not reasonable to take all twelve months’ fee even in this pandemic. “If schools are in trouble, they should not take fees from the students who are in school, instead they should seek help from the government.”
Not giving subsidy to guardians and making force to pay for no service is not justifiable, Bhandari added.
Surendra Basnet, student leader of All Nepal National Independent Student’s Union (ANNISU), said schools could not take fee of this corona virus period under any pretext.
Mahendra Bahadur Chhetri, education section head of Lalitpur Metropolitan city said the local government has unable to direct schools in lacks of policy decision from centre regarding the fee of grade 11 and 12 of this time.
Chettri further said that now the local government is in consultation with stakeholders for further decision about grade 11 and 12. The federal government as well as other governments seems silence regarding grade 11 and 12 till now.
Meanwhile, stakeholders have demanded with the private schools not to take admission charge from the guardians though it allowed them to register the name of students from August 17.
Chairperson Bhandari said guardians would not deny pay reasonable fee after the starting of academic session. But schools must not take admission fee from guardians at a time the academic session are becoming uncertain.
Likewise, student leader Basnet said they will defy if school charges fee from students in any title.