Parents of some corporate schools in Hyderabad are confused about who to contact in the state education or school education department regarding the ECS system that some schools, including Chirec public school, have unilaterally decided to introduce. On April 23, 2020, the state education department thanked parents for their feedback on school fee collections via Twitter, but since then, they have remained silent.
One parent, S Sridevi (name changed), tried to reach out to the state education secretary, Director of the school education department, and the District Education Officer (DEO), but received no response. She wanted to complain about corporate schools introducing a new fee collection scheme and behaving like non-banking finance companies by involving third parties. Another parent, Saibaba (name changed), said that the school authorities were determined to implement their decisions, and parents had to pay whatever they said. He also mentioned that some local mandal level education officials were rude to parents who couldn’t afford the fees and asked why they had admitted their children to private schools.
Efforts by The Hans India to contact the State Education Secretary and State School Education Director were unsuccessful. The State government had previously promised to establish a fee regulation committee for schools following litigation in the state high court. However, the cabinet sub-committee assigned to the task only finalized implementing English medium but did not provide any finality on fee regulation. Against this backdrop, schools have taken advantage of the silence of both the state government and the education department to introduce a new scheme of collecting and financing school fees in corporate schools.
