Reopen schools on time: parents- coimbatore

Source : The Hindu:Staff Reporter,May 18,2010

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Use corpus for additional funds

Collect money for books

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COIMBATORE: Parents here have appealed to private school managements to reopen institutions on time.

S.B.O.A. Matriculation School Parents' Association, Coimbatore, made the appeal on behalf of parents at a press conference held here on Monday.

Their demand comes in the wake of the Association of Managements of Nursery, Primary, and Matriculation Schools' decision to indefinitely postpone the start of the academic year to contest the fees fixed by the Private Schools Fee Determination Committee.

R. Mani Mohan, president of the parents' association, said the managements could start the schools as scheduled and wait for the results of their appeal.

They could collect money for books and notebooks.

For additional funds the schools could make use of the corpus.

In any case the fees the schools collected in March 2010 in the last academic year were valid till June.

With this money the managements could start the academic year.

Appeal

And by the end of June, they would have in hand the orders of their appeal, with which they would be in a position to further run the schools.

Mr. Mohan also wanted the State Government to make necessary changes to Sub-section 2 of Section 11 of the Tamil Nadu Schools (Regulation of Collection of Fee) Act, which empowered School Education Department officers to search and seize records from schools.

Court ruling

The Madras High Court struck down the clause saying it was an infringement on the schools' rights.

He said that if the Government failed to bring about the necessary changes the Act would be toothless.

The parents' association secretary M. Saravanan said in a release that the very fact that the fees fixed by the Justice Govindarajan Committee were less than what the schools collected last year justified the parents' grievances.

Thanking the State Government for the legislation, he said the Act had immensely helped parents who were putting up with higher fees collected by managements just to get their children educated.

It was also planning to start a parents' forum to improve the quality of education, protect the rights of parents and also teachers.