After National Victor Public School in East Delhi, rolled back fee hike on the directions of the Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, another private school, “The Queen Mary”, has also rolled back its decision on fee hike. The development came after Chief Minister intervened and asked the school administration to roll back the fee hike without any further delay.
The chief minister had instructed the officials of the department of education (DoE) to comply with his order and take necessary action in this regard after a complaint was made to him by the parents in Janta Samvad .
DoE directed school to immediately roll back the fee hike in the school and refund the increased fee to the parents or guardians of the students with immediate effect. School administration was warned that action would be initiated against them if they fail to roll back the fee hike on some pretext.
“Parents had complained to the Chief Minister against Queen Mary's Public School, Model Town III, that they have arbitrarily hiked the school fee,” mentioning, the Government took a strong note of the complaints of arbitrary fee hike in violation of the judgment of the Supreme Court and High Court and also the directions of the education department,” the Delhi government release stated.
Immediately after receiving DoE order, the school reverted, “Your goodself is hereby informed that school has rolled back the proposed provisional fee hike for the session 2018-19 as per your above mentioned order and it is also to inform that the excess amount if any will be refunded or adjusted to the fee accounts of the respective students immediately.”
Reacting to the roll-back of fees by the school, Ruchi Jain, who was one of the complainants of the fee hike, said, “We are very happy on the development. This has further cemented our trust in the government & the Chief Minister. I wish they keep working the way they are working for the betterment of education.”
“I never had thought that meeting the Chief Minister would be so easy, he is so approachable. We met him at his residence during Janta Samvad,' she added.
This rollback comes in continuation with several private schools falling in line after the education department, on the Chief Minister's directions, took strong steps against them. Private schools were sent notices against violations of norms like arbitrary fee hike and non-disbursal of books, stationary and uniforms to Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) category students.