Syed Shemul Parvez :
Education on the parts of the children of middle and lower-middle-income groups of families in the capital city appears hard, since the last Covid-19 pandemic situation, because of financial crisis.
Many guardians complained that the authorities of many private educational institutions were asking for huge sum of money from them for various purposes.
Sources said that many private schools of the Dhaka city have been accused of creating financial pressure on the parents to pay the arrear tuition fees of their children. But a large number of city residents either had seen a pay cut, or lost jobs or incurred losses in their businesses due to the coronavirus thrust.
In this situation, guardians fear schools might not promote their children if they fail to clear the fees in full.
Parvez Ahmed, a resident of Lalbagh said that I lost my job in last April because of covid-19 outbreak across the country. Nowadays I am totally helpless.
I don’t have any more income source. I have two school going children. They are students of city’s two different Schools. After six months, school started online classes and examinations with pressure to pay the fees of last six months what we couldn’t do because of countrywide lockdown for covid-19 pandemic situation, he added.
Sumi Akter, guardian of another student, said ‘We are from low-middle class family. We had small business in the area, but at present our business has been closed completely because of coronavirous outbreak.
My son is a student of class seven.
In this situation, West End High School put pressure on us to pay the previous month’s pay to attend and for promotion.
Meanwhile, school authorities have denied the allegation labelled against them. They said ‘We are just telling the parents to clear the fees as we have to pay the teacher’s salary and keep the institutions on run.
Salma Akter, guardian of a student of Viqarunnesa School of the capital told the new Nation that we are happy and pleased with the School Authority. Because they didn’t increase the tuition fees for the last couple of years.
Even when some guardians applied to the authority for the waived, they granted that very cordially, she said.
But my child was a student of city’s Safir School, that time I faced problem due to taking huge number of Admission and tuition fees, Salma further added.
Shahan Ara Begum, Principal of Motijheel Ideal School and College, claims that they did not put any pressure on guardians to pay tuition fees. She also said that this private educational institution has been paying teachers their salaries regularly. “Tuition fees are our only source of income. We have to run the institution. How will we meet expense if the guardians do not pay tuition fees?” she asked.
