Opinion

LETTERS: Uniformity in fee structure

LETTERS: Uniformity in fee structure

By The Himalayan Times

Almost all the private schools in the country seem to be charging exorbitant fees in the past several years due to lack of clearly spelled out policies of the government. If there were any such rules and regulations regarding the fee structures, they did not seem to be strictly followed. There was no proper supervision and monitoring mechanism of the concerned ministry and department to control these irregularities. Each of the private schools collects school fees in its own ways. There is no uniformity and similarity in the fee structures. However, it was interesting to know that the government has now formed high level teams to monitor school fees and physical facilities of the private schools “Joint secy-led high level teams begin school fee monitoring” (THT, May 10, Page 2). The findings of these monitoring teams should be made public. Based upon their recommendations, the government should be serious and committed to bring all the private schools under its umbrella and maintain uniformity in their fee structures. The government should, therefore, establish clearly spelled out criteria, if there are not any, to bring uniformity among all the private schools. Based upon these criteria, all these schools should be categorised. Keeping in view these categorizations, the government should establish the school fee structure and fix the perks and benefits of the teachers and administrative staff. Rai Biren Bangdel, Maharajgunj Apropos of the news story “Joint secy-led high level teams begin school fee monitoring,” this farce can be eliminated by instituting a proper punitive system in place as ‘It is an open secret that the privately-run schools collect fee from students…’ under various pretexts “School Monitoring” (THT, May10, Page 8). There is no need to monitor what is very obvious. If any further proof is needed, all that the joint secretaries need to do is to send decoy parents to collect information on fees and facilities. This should help in acquiring concrete information and rock-hard evidence on fees and facilities rather than visiting schools and holding table talk, which will not only lead to charges and denials but also promote Nepal’s most-loved underground economic activity: corruption. Apart from fees, the DOE must also check on quality of education, and one sure-shot way of doing this is to give targets to schools to produce excellent manpower. It is also becoming a popular fashion among schools and colleges to collect exorbitant charges under practical heading to employ their students as functional servers for local parties at catering palaces and hotels. I check with servers at all the parties I attend to see if they get paid for their internship. One hotel honcho proudly boasted that he charges money for allowing these students to come and serve the local revelers. And, there is no need to charge hefty amount for tours and excursions. Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu