Students threaten street protest

Kathmandu, May 25

Fourteen student unions today warned of protests if the government failed to take action against private schools that have been flouting the government’s directives relating to fee fixation.

Organising a press conference here in Kathmandu today, student unions said the government had kept mum even as private schools were fleecing parents.

A couple of weeks ago, the government had invited student unions for talks after the latter started monitoring private schools separately. The MoE and student unions agreed to jointly monitor schools.

However, the government didn’t take action against schools flouting the directives.

Five monitoring teams led by joint-secretaries and comprising representatives from student unions monitored around two dozen special category schools, including Ullens, Rato Bangala, DAV Sushil Kedia, Ideal Model, Little Angles, GEMS, Brihaspati Vidya Sadan, Siddhartha Banasthali, Occidental Public, among others.

Some of these schools were found charging up to Rs 30,000 as monthly fee for Grade I, but were not providing proper services.Some of them did not even grant scholarships to students.

“Even after ten days of monitoring, the Ministry of Education has not taken action against schools violating its directives.

This indicates that either these schools are greasing the palms of government officials or the government officials are taking undue advantage of them,” said UP Lamichhane, spokesperson for the Nepali Congress-aligned Nepal Student Union.