Amidst the confusion prevailing over the re-admission fee issue, the East Singhbhum district administration has written to the State HRD department, prior to the decision to be taken on the re-admission fee dispute in the city.
The district education office has sent a letter to the HRD deparment through the Deputy Commissioner’s office to seek clarifications on re-admission fees and an explanation of the capitation fee as mentioned under sec 13 of the RTE Act.
“There has been a growing demand from the Jamshedpur Parents Association to refund the fees the parents deposited. There is no clarifications about how should the district administration regulate the fee structure or what steps should be taken in order to implement the regulations. We are yet to take a call after we get some guidelines from the Government,” said Indra Bhushan Singh, District Superintendent of Education (DSE), East Singhbhum.
On the other hand, all private schools in the city were asked to submit their interpretations of the RTE Act and suggestions on fee structure and schools performance at a meeting conducted by Amitabh Kaushal, the deputy commissioner, East Singhbhum on April 16 at Centre for Excellence. The schools were supposed to submit their reports till April 20 but none of them turned up so far.
The DSE said that the RTE Act does not specify anything on re-admission fees neither the Bihar Education Service Code speaks anything on it.
It may be mentioned that city-based several English medium schools have enhanced fees by nearly 25-30 percent from the 2014-15 sessions to the current 2015-16 session at both primary and middle school level. The schools have also charged re-admission fees from the students.
Umesh Kumar, president of Jamshedpur Parents Association, said like every past year this year too, the fees have been hiked. The decision is unfair and it will increase burden on the parents. The schools have also taken re-admission fees that need to be refunded.