Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Supreme Court (SC) has sought details of fee structure from schools and wants to make it transparent, but state government is seeking unnecessary information and adding load on schools that are already in a difficult position due to Covid-19 outbreak and shutdown for two years.
Quoting this, Madhya Pradesh Private School Owners Association of Unaided Schools approached joint director’s office on Friday and sent a memorandum addressed to Commissioner Public Instruction (CPI) Anubha Srivastava.
Currently, there is no one in the post of JD Indore, hence, the letter will be forwarded to Bhopal.
Objection from school owners
“We are ready to provide the details of fee, but state school education department is seeking other nine unnecessary information including audit reports,” Gopal Soni, president of school association, said.
He added that the format provided by state government is different from the one sought by SC.
“We are not aided schools and we receive no support from government, so why are we required to provide so many other reports too,” Soni questioned.
He added that information including admission form, fee collection, audit report, salary details of employees, cheque book update, funds details, school assets, school registers and meeting details, etc. are also sought in the format provided by the department.
Instructions from school education department
Earlier, in the light of the latest order of the SC and prior orders from High Court, state government had directed private schools to make public the details of fees charged by them.
Under this, every private school in the state will compulsorily upload the school wise and item wise details of the fees collected till September 3, 2021 on the public portal.
If there is a complaint raised showing discrepancies in the uploaded details, parents will be able to file an objection before the District Education Committee.
The district committee will resolve the objection in four weeks. Private schools will also be able to inform the Directorate of Public Instruction regarding discrepancy in the uploaded information.
Parent association Jagrut Palak Sangh from Indore represented by advocate Chanchal Gupta had challenged the arbitrary fee collection of private schools in the High Court, gave the above information.
Along with this, a format was also been sent to collect information regarding the formation and fees of district committees.
SC orders regarding disclosure of fee
SC ordered schools to tell the different heads for what they are charging the fees they are taking from the parents.
“We direct the Director, School Education, State of Madhya Pradesh to compile the details from the respective District Committees about compliances made by the concerned schools within the concerned district and display that information on the official website of Education Department of the State of Madhya Pradesh, within two weeks from today,” said the order.
