The Associated Management of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka has decided to file police complaints against parents who have not paid the school fees as mandated by the High Court of Karnataka.

This was decided at a meeting on Monday after the State Government recently issued strict directions to Block Education Officers to issue transfer certificates to children wishing to move out of private schools if parents file an application. Many private school managements had refused to issue transfer certificates to parents as they had not paid the school fees and wanted the parents to clear their dues before they pulled them out of school.

D. Shashi Kumar, General Secretary of the association, said they would file a cheating complaint against parents who were harassing school managements for availing benefits but not paying the fee. “They have to pay the fees that have been announced by the High Court,” he said.

The High Court had said that for the 2020-21 academic year, parents have to pay 85% of the tuition fees of the previous academic year.

The school management member of a private school in North Bengaluru said they had nine students whose parents had not paid the fees for the previous academic year. “While some of these parents have shifted their children to government schools, some others have shifted to private schools that charge the same fees as our school. This is gross injustice to managements like us,” he said.

However, Mullahalli Suri, President of the Parents’ Association, said school managements should not “stoop down” and resort to filing police complaints. “They should look at the issue on humanitarian grounds as many parents were affected financially due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” he reasoned.

Other decisions

Another decision taken by the association on Monday was demanding that the procedures for providing fire safety certificates and structural safety certificates be simplified. These documents are prerequisite to obtaining the renewal of recognition certificates for existing schools from the previous academic year.

“If the department does not make this process easy, then thousands of existing schools will fail to get their affiliation renewed and lakhs of students will be studying in unrecognised schools,” a school management member said.