Don't waive fees, clear reimbursements of EWS students: Pvt schools to govt

The largest congregation of a budget private school, National Independent Schools Alliance (NISA), has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and sought relief for private schools.

In the letter, NISA has urged the government and concerned ministries, not to issue any orders pertaining to a school fee waiver for the next three months.

It has also demanded for the immediate release of reimbursement amount of EWS students pending for many years.

Kulbhushan Sharma, President; NISA, said in the letter that due to the outbreak of coronavirus epidemic in the country, and economic crisis has arisen in front of private schools, especially budget schools.

He mentioned in the letter that there are more than 5 lakh private schools in the country, which are providing quality education to crores of poor students.

The livelihood of more than 2 crore teaching and non-teaching staff is dependent on these schools. He further said that some organisations have started demanding school fee waivers under their vested interests.

Schools are already facing challenges towards providing salary to their employees. The NISA president said that except for some large and elite schools, other schools do not have additional savings.

If the government issues order to waive school fees, then there will be an existential crisis in front of budget schools. Kulbhushan Sharma demanded the government to declare a new academic session, reducing the numbers of holidays for the upcoming session so that classes can run smoothly for 220 days.

Instead of waiving the fee, government can help poor and needy parents by putting an equal amount of school fees in their bank accounts under DBT.