Angered over fee hike despite the pandemic situation that has put financial pressures on parents and refusal by the school management to roll back the hike, a group of parents of students of Delhi Public School, Pune have raised a storm on social media over the last few days.
The parents have levied several allegations against the school such as not conducting elections to form a Parent-Teacher Association, “illegally” raising the fee to the tune of 15 per cent despite the pandemic and government orders not to hike fees, charging transport fee when school is not operational, not responding to parent’s repeated emails, additional miscellaneous expenses to tuition fees and so on. School principal Neelam Chakravarty though refuted claims stating that the maximum fee hike was 8 per cent and was agreeable to the majority of parents.
Taking to Twitter, a parent Rakesh Choudhary wrote, “No PTA, increased school fee by 15 per cent, illegally merged AMC with school fee, charged transport fee when school is not operating, no response to our mails.”
Another Twitter user, Rohitashva Pandey wrote, “DPS Pune parents plea ignored completely by the school, no response to mail sent by parents.”
Parents raised questions on the calculation of school fees. Priyanka Gupta tweeted, “DPS Pune is charging full fees for the primary school (nursery) though they are giving only 1.5hours hours of online classes, reduced from five-hour physical classes and that too, only four days a week. Can you believe 8,000 per month for nursery?”
A Twitter user, Suhag Patel, wrote: “DPS Pune has not formed PTA and did not even bother to inform parents about that. Since last year, they are charging transportation fees which is completely unethical.”
Meanwhile, Chakravarty refuted most claims. “In 2020-21, we did not hike the fees despite having the approval for fee hike from parents keeping the pandemic year and government order in mind. However, we had to open the school for little time during the year, we purchased a lot of specialized equipment and expenses were made for sanitation, laptops for teachers and so on. Hence this year, we had to do a small fee hike to the tune of five per cent for lower classes and a maximum eight per cent for higher classes. As far as transport fees is concerned, buses are owned by us and we are paying salaries to drivers and cleaners besides maintenance cost of vehicles,” she said.
On the allegation that a PTA has not been formed, she accepted the same. “Until 2020, we had a PTA but we could not conduct elections due to the pandemic. However, we have initiated preparations for forming a PTA now. As far as communication is concerned, majority of parents are satisfied with the explanation and co-operating but a small group is not convinced,” she said.
