Schools are adding fuel to the fire of recession that is already burning a hole in the family’s pocket, with moves to increase fees by almost 50 per cent. Parents are not willing to buy their explanation.
The recession just got worse for parents of school-going children. City schools, particularly the premier ones, have hiked their admission fee and even the monthly fees of students by a whopping 50 per cent. And if this wasn’t enough, other fringe expenses such as transportation have also gone up by a near 30-40 per cent. Worse, schools forming a cartel by imposing a similar fee structure has left parents with no choice but to continue with the same school.
While schools managements cite reasons such as improving teacher salaries and introducing new facilities in the school, parents are just not convinced. They say that the fee-hike comes at a wrong time, just when they are facing salary cuts and job loss. Besides, with the new fee structure in place, a good part of their monthly income is being siphoned off to pay tuition fees, even if the child is at a pre-primary level.
Take the case of Karan Kapoor (name changed) who will have to shell out an additional Rs 15,000 for his kid this academic year, as he moves into Class I. Parents like Kapoor had opted for this school three years ago keeping in mind its ‘reasonable’ fee structure. “We were never prepared for this kind of a hike. When I admitted my kid, the school had a Rs 27,000 slab as tuition fees. The next year it suddenly hiked the fees by a clear 50 per cent. The following year there was again a hike of 36 per cent, and now with an additional increase of 17 per cent we will be paying close to Rs 65,000 for a child from this academic session,’’ said Kapoor.
Such concerns of parents have, however, failed to move the management of most city schools . When confronted, school authorities casually suggest that parents can pull their children out if needed. They even say that they would gladly refund all security deposits and annual fees, even mid-term. Small consolation that.
Parents protest that such an arrangement does not really solve their problem because of the practice of cartelisation among most schools. “The admission fee in most schools that fall under one category is more or less the same. So if I take my child out, I not only lose out on the nonrefundable admission fee but am also expected to deposit an equally large amount in the new school,’’ said Prasad.
Apart from the tuition fees, parents say, there are several other miscellaneous expenses which have been increasing over the years but have gone unnoticed so far. These include expenses towards conveyance, uniforms and textbooks among many others. “While we paid a meagre amount of Rs 5,000 annually as bus fare until two years back, we are now shelling out nearly Rs 18,000 for the same. And this is irrespective of the distance travelled,” said another parent who lives only 10 minutes away from school. She also goes on to say that a few “brand conscious” schools in the city have made it compulsory for the students to wear, among other things, branded sport shoes, which come for nothing less than Rs 2,000 (approx).
Justified hikes?
Though school authorities justify the high fee structures by citing various facilities that are made available to a child and are enhanced every session, parents rue that these facilities are only used to “decorate prospectuses” every year.
Defending fee hikes, school principals insist that it is a small price that parents pay to provide quality education along with a brand name to their children. All parents want the best for their children and that does not come cheap. “One has to pay more for any product that is better than the rest. And moreover schools invest a lot of money on their teachers, infrastructure facilities and even advertisements,’’ said Janajit Ray, vice president of Oakridge International.
Parents disagree. “In the name of providing extra-curricular activities, schools only fleece us. For example, we pay an extra sum of Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000 each year only for karate classes that are held only once a week. How is someone to learn the art with just a handful of sessions anyway,’’ questions Shalini Prasad (name changed) who has two kids in the middle school. Others argue that such activities should be optional so that parents are spared at least some expense.
School managements point out that the operational expenditure is on the rise continuously, primarily because more money is being spent on salaries and staff training sessions these days. With every other sector offering lucrative pay packages, schools feel that a similar trend needs to be maintained in the education sector to retain quality teachers. “Very few qualified people are interested in this profession (teaching) because of the unattractive salaries. So, in order to attract the right people to take up jobs in schools, we have to improve our pay structures,’’ said Madhubala Kapoor, principal of Nasr School.
Entry fee
The ordeal for parents begins right from the time of child’s admission (see box). While most people who passed out from school before the year 2000 may not remember paying any admission fee, it is now being routinely charged by all city schools these days.
But what is this admission fee? Schools charge an admission fee in the name of capital expenditure which includes any construction work undertaken by the school on its premises or any other development work. But such works only happen once in a while. “To charge such huge amounts (Rs 25,000 to Rs 1 lakh) for that and also hike it by a minimum of 25 per cent every year is definitely unreasonable,’’ said another parent who paid Rs 25,000 as admission fee for his first kid two years ago and will now have to shell out a neat Rs 60,000 for his second kid this year.
Agreeing that a child’s education is adding to the burden of parents, especially in the tough times of recession, a few principals of city schools feel that parents should be given valid reasons for the sudden hike in admission and term fees. “It is true that education is getting expensive by the day but we have to understand that the cost of everything else is also increasing. However, I completely agree that schools should keep parents informed about where their money is being spent,’’ said Ray.
But for parents like Prasad, it is not just the money but also the emotional aspect of a child that is forcing her to continue with the existing school. They feel that dragging children from one school to another disturbs their ‘emotional balance.’ “Children get used to a set of teachers, peers and environment. Adjusting to a new school can be quite taxing,’’ says a parent.
It is precisely this emotional aspect of education and parenting that schools in the city are exploiting to the fullest.
Quality can come cheap
The modest Kendriya Vidyalayas in the city are witnessing a curious trend over the last one year. They are being approached by parents who want to pull their children out of high-end schools and get them enrolled in the reasonably priced KVs. Teachers say that parents are not only seeking affordable education but also one that promises overall development, sans all those fancy frills and molly-coddling that expensive schools are known for.
While KV teachers admit that a majority of parents still prefer private ‘international’ schools, believing that ‘expensive is better’ there is a slight reversal of that trend now. “We mostly get children of central government officers who have transferable jobs,” says S Ramani, a KV teacher, adding that now even those working in the private sector are considering KV education once they get to know the teaching methodology adopted by these schools. Fees too have a large part to play in parents’ decision. While the fees of other schools with air-conditioned rooms peaks like the summer heat in Hyderabad, that of the KV remains fixed at Rs 160 per month. Besides, There is no tuition fee for girl students. The last time the KV fee was hiked, was five years ago.
Teachers and proud KV alumni explain that these CBSE board schools are in the same league as any other school, if the achievements of its students in their post-school life are any indicator.
Indu Agarwal, another KV teacher, says that the USP of a KV lies in it being a noncommercial organisation. “But when something is cheap, we suspect its quality,’’ rues Ramani, explaining the preference for private schools among parents.
Inactive PTAs
When Margaret Roberts took up cudgels against the government about two years ago, seeking an exemption from a compulsory Telugu paper for her daughter in the Class X board exam, it was a lonely battle. While the number of non-Telugu speaking children who would have benefited from this exemption would have been in hundreds, those fighting for it strangely never met. Roberts says that she never tried getting the parents together, but was fortunate that the exemption was finally given because pressure had been mounted from other sides as well.
Small wonder then that when the admission and term fees of city schools has shot through the roof, there is barely a whimper of a protest from parents. The few who do complain about the fee hike at a time when recession is peaking, are doing so in isolation. One parent volunteers an explanation, “You don’t stop buying petrol because it is expensive. After all it (school fee) is for your child’s education - so even if it pinches a bit, there wouldn’t be much resistance.”
It is possibly this ‘understanding’ of schools’ policies that has made Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) completely inactive in the city. While one may pertinently question as to how schools are able to take such decisions without fear of a backlash from the parent community, the answer is that PTAs in Hyderabad are largely ineffective bodies, choosing to discuss only the scores of students and conscientious festival celebrations in their parent-teacher meetings. School management issues are rarely on the radar of the parent community. Even if they feel the pinch of the fee hike, the parent body doesn’t dare bare its teeth for fear of spoiling the rapport with the school that their child goes to.
Only this time around, things may be different as some parents say there might be a furore over the hike in fees. However, that seems farfetched given that in many cases the notices for the hike were served a good two-three months ago.
In fact, last year about 150 city parents came together to form a group to fight out such issues, but the number of members has since dissipated to an abysmal ten. “We are just a handful now. Most parents feared that their rapport with the school would get affected by joining this group, so they left,” shares a parent who had initiated the group.
Hyderabad could take a leaf out of parent activism from other cities. In Mumbai for instance, PTAs have set an example of how a united community of concerned parents can bring about much-needed changes in the way schools are run. In fact, it was over a fee hike issue in the year 2000-01 that PTAs of 160 schools across Mumbai got together and formed the PTA United Forum to fight it. And they won it, as they did several other cases that they had taken up over the last decade. “We took responsibility of the whole parent community and their concerns. We take up issues both with government-aided as well as private schools. And in the last decade, we have managed to gather enough clout to ensure that no school management can take an arbitrary decision,” says Arundhati Chavan, president of PTA United Forum, Mumbai, that has filed various petitions in the court challenging school policies and even won them.
Margaret Roberts admits that had she been in Mumbai, her struggle would have been supported by many more parents.
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