Parents’ activism takes root
Parents of students in schools all over the city are joining hands to fight school managements
Sudipta Sengupta TNN Hyderabad:
Parents of students in schools all over the city are joining hands to fight school managements
Sudipta Sengupta TNN Hyderabad:
An exorbitant hike in school fee, in some cases as much as 50 per cent, in times of recession and job loss has catalysed a citizen’s movement the city had never witnessed before - that of the parent community joining hands to fight against school managements. This new form of activism in the city, over the last few months, has seen parents conducting rallies, meeting officials, staging protests and even fighting legal battles against managements to ensure that the hike is rolled back and that schools settle for a more reasonable amount. While parents of children in two city schools have already won half the battle with the high court directing authorities of Meridian High School and Delhi Public School to collect only the first term fee until further hearing on the matter, several other parents are also lining up before the court now for similar orders. The final hearing of the case is slated for sometime this week. New parent associations are being formed and the existing ones are getting healthier, stronger. For instance, the Andhra Pradesh Students and Parents Association (APSPA) that was formed in February last year, until recently, had only a bunch of enthusiastic parents as members. But ever since the fee hike issue was reported, the forum has been flooded will calls from parents eager to register and fight the battle under the APSPA banner. “After the group was formed I went from school to school trying to convince parents to be part of APSPA but received no response. Now, parents are suddenly very interested in signing up and voicing their concern through the forum,” said Pramod Kumar Amruth, president, APSPA. Also, the recently created Hyderabad School Parents Association (HSPA), which is still awaiting registration, has already attracted close to 2,200 members, comprising parents from seven schools in the city. The forum soon plans to file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking relief from the fee hike. Interestingly, this battle against school authorities is no more restricted to parents with children studying in up market private schools in the city. Even parents of those going to smaller schools like Princess Esin Girls High School in the Old City, are ready to take on the management on this issue now. The parents’ association of this school has already approached the Human Rights Commission and is awaiting a verdict by Wednesday. “If the ruling is not in our favour, then we will go to the high court,” said S S Muslehuddin, who is part of the forum. He rues that the school, which is supposed to be run by a non-profit trust is now charging close to Rs 41,300 as admission fee for nursery grade.“People in the Old City can’t afford to pay such an exorbitant amount,” he said adding that even the increase in fee is becoming a burden for parents there. Muslehuddin’s concerns are no different from those of other parents in the city. “We have been putting up with the whims and fancies of the school management for far too long. While the school prospectus clearly states that the annual fee hike would be between 5 and 10 per cent, it has been charging much more than that over the last twothree years. But this year it shook us up with a whopping 40 per cent hike in fee,” said Subrahmanyam N who has two children studying in DPS, Secunderabad and is expected to pay Rs 44,000 this year as tuition fee for each child. “That is when we decided that we need to get together and address the issue,” he added. The Delhi Public School Parents Association (Hyderabad and Secunderabad), whose case would now be heard jointly with Meridian School Parents Association, now hope that the final ruling is in their favour. Parents, while glad that their battle so far has been a success, admit that they would never have so actively participated in this had they not been hit by recession. “It is only after we saw that our friends, who were losing jobs and facing pay cuts, were considering pulling their children out of the school, did we realise the need to fight this battle,” said N Ravi Kumar, secretary of the DPS parents association, Secunderabad. Like him several other parents agree that this form of activism is fairly new in the city, where until last year it would be an uphill task to get even a handful of parents together for a meeting or a rally. “The response and support has been overwhelming. Once HSPA gets registered, it would be the first forum of its kind in the city and we hope to do a lot of good work under this banner,” said Kamal J Maliramani, vice president of the Meridian school parents group praying that their first battle ends on a winning note.
