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that it’s the duty of local education “Since we cannot block students to acceptable standards so that the
ministry officials to sort out manage- with unpaid fees from attending on- middle class can avail free-of-charge
ment-parents disputes. line classes, there’s no guarantee that primary-secondary education,
However, the learned judge’s parents will regularly pay fees on due parents’ associations are targeting
ruling with its somewhat contradic- instalment dates. Unless parents will- private schools. “The court order
tory directives has evoked mixed ingly pay their instalments, school to pay 85 percent of (contracted)
response from private schools and managements are helpless. With high fees is too heavy a burden in these
parents’ communities. costs of fees collection and irregular pandemic times. Instead, private
“Following the court’s verdict, our cash flow, our member schools are schools should seek relief from the
cash flow will increase by Rs.20-40 likely to experience great difficulty in government by way of exemption of
lakh this year. This will enable us to paying the salaries of 300,000 teach- vehicle or property taxes rather than
pay an additional Rs.1,000-2,000 to ers and nearly 200,000 support staff. insisting that parents pay high fees,”
our teachers who have been getting On the one hand, schools have the says Arumainathan, president of
only 75 percent of their contracted authority to collect fees but the order the Tamil Nadu Parents Welfare As-
salaries,” says Priyanka Nandha- states that schools cannot expel any sociation.
kumar, secretary at Sri Sankara Ma- student for non-payment of fees. Our This argument is typical of post-
triculation Higher Secondary School, next step is to appeal to the state gov- independence India’s subsidies-ad-
Chennai, which has 1,200 students ernment to underwrite unpaid fees,” dicted middle class. It is tantamount
and 58 teachers on its muster rolls. says Martin Kennedy, president to penalising risk-bearing private
But even though the high court of the Tamil Nadu Private Schools school promoters for the ‘crime’ of
has allowed private school man- Association. promoting learning institutions while
agements to collect 85 percent of Curiously, instead of pressuris- government schools established at
contracted annual fees, they are ing the state government to improve public expense are allowed to go
perplexed about ways and means to teaching-learning standards in Tamil from bad to worse.
derive the benefit of this court order. Nadu’s 37,500 government schools Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)

AUGUST 2021 EDUCATIONWORLD 21