Hyderabad: In a massive protest organised by the School Fee Regulation JAC at Indira Park on Saturday, parents protesting high fees by private schools in the twin cities said Hyderabad had become a “safe haven for looters”.
Speakers at the event slammed managements of private schools saying they had commercialised education and were looking at parents purely as customers. MLA R. Krishnaiah spoke about how school managements had deviated from serving the needs of citizens to focus purely on enterprise. The government is giving importance to water connections to every household. But this issue too is equally important, he said. The event was organised by the School Fee Regulation Joint Action Committee. It has various organisations within it and one of the prominent ones is the HSPA (Hyderabad School Parents Association), which has been at the forefront of protests against high fees.
The event was also attended by senior teachers and professors. “Good education is only possible if parents, teachers and managements work with the sole intention of imparting quality good education. But private schools are looking at education solely as a business which is why fees in private schools have sky-rocketed over the past few years,” said academician Chukka Ramaiah.
Social activist Prof. Kancha Ilaiah said parents were only admitting children in private schools because there were no government schools in the English medium of instruction. Implementation of the KG-to-PG scheme will solve this problem to a large extent, he said. Meanwhile, members of the HSPA vowed to continue their fight against high school fees until the government took concrete steps to bring in strict regulations to control high fees. They asked the government to set up a fee regulatory body to oversee fees besides safeguarding rights of parents and kids.
