Anticipating protests, several schools across Hyderabad voluntarily declared a holiday on Thursday owing to the call for a state-wide bandh by the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and other student organisations.
The student organisations asked for schools and intermediate colleges to be shut on Thursday to protest against the rising fees being collected by corporate educational institutions.
The student leaders also pointed out that the Professor T Tirupati Rao Committee had also been constituted to look into the issue, but to no avail. They demanded that a mechanism should be implemented to regulate school fees.
Parents were given short notice, as many schools only informed them of the shutdown on Wednesday evening.
Exams that were scheduled to be held on Thursday were also postponed to a later date.
It has been a decade since Hyderabad parents began their fight against the inordinate delays in setting up a District Fee Regulatory Committee (DFRC). Parents, who have been fighting since 2008, allege that the collusion between the ruling bodies and the private school management is glaring.
The Tirupati Rao committee was formed in March 2017 and was given a month’s time to submit a report on the issue. The association says that the ‘school fee loot’ continued despite Deputy Chief Minister Kadiyam Srihari announcing in the Assembly that schools should not accept admissions till the Prof. Tirupati Rao Committee report was submitted.
In April this year, the Telangana government moved the Hyderabad High Court and filed a petition to get a stay order on the issue of hiking school fees in the state.
In January, the Telangana government directed the managements of all private schools in the state to maintain status-quo and not hike their fees for the academic year 2018-19.
The move brought much needed relief to parents, who have been demanding regulation of the fees in Hyderabad and Telangana.
However, some schools challenged the decision in court.