MoE disobeys SC order

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: The Ministry of Education has disobeyed the Supreme Court order to deliver monthly fee monitoring reports of private schools.

On April 28, last year, a bench of the Supreme Court had directed the ministry to provide monitoring reports, on the seventh of every Nepali month, on the Public Interest Litigation registered by advocate Krishna Subedi on private schools overcharging parents.

But MoE passed the job on to the Department of Education, which has stopped sending reports since December last year.

Although many private schools were reported to be overcharging parents, the reports of the Department of Education spoke little of the rampant fleecing the schools were engaging in.

The compiled report furnished by Department of Education to the court, does not mention anything expect decisions of official meetings of the fee-monitoring committees and some findings of schools using unauthorised textbooks.

The second report shows that four out of nine schools monitored in Kathmandu were overcharging tuition fees.

However, the DoE report failed to mention the names of the schools and further said that the schools had not furnished clarification on why they did so even after repeated inquiry.

Baneshwor-based Pathsala Nepal Foundation and Chelsea International School were asked details of the expenditure under various titles, but the report does not mention their responses.

According to the report, a total of 35 schools in Lalitpur and 26 schools in Kathmandu were penalised from Rs 3000 to Rs 7000 for not furnishing the fee structure to the District Education Office, which approves the fee structure every year before the academic session begins.

The report also mentions the closure of 57 illegal schools in Morang.

The final hearing of the PIL is scheduled for tomorrow.

Subedi had filed the PIL demanding certiorari in the name of the defendant Cabinet of the government of Nepal and its agencies.