THE New Nation reported on Thursday that students and guardians were demonstrating in front of city’s different private schools since Sunday protesting the phenomenal rise in tuition fees to pay for higher salary for teachers and school staffs. Guardians alleged that school managements have taken the decision unilaterally without consultation and the range of tuition fees hike varied from 46 to 62 percent.
Guardians said they have to pay Tk 500 for a Class Six student now up from Tk 350 for a month. Class Three students’ tuition fees have been raised to Tk 400 from 250 before. It may cause more dropouts. What they said is that school management can’t take such unilateral decision taking guardians’ hostage. As it appears that the school management remains defiant on their part not to withdraw or reduce the tuition hike and the guardians vow to continue the protest thus going in turn to create a tense situation at private primary to secondary schools level.
The tuition hike at city’s private schools has produced two scenarios that include cost free education at government primary schools and nominal fees at secondary schools but exorbitant tuition fees at private schools. It shows the growing disparity in the education system from the lower tier of our society. Moreover, the huge pay hike for government officials under the new pay scale has created another kind of discord at upper education level. Public University teachers and government college teachers are already agitating to get further rise in their salary complaining that they have been downgraded in comparisons with BCS administration cadre officers who build the bulk of the bureaucracy.
So it is obvious that when some people are getting more than what they deserve it is forcing others also to call for an end of discrimination. Schoolteachers may have their own logic to raise their salary increasing tuition of their students. As buyers in the market, purchasing power is all that matters and the city’s private schools have acted accordingly. But who would protect the poor at the lower tier who are not organized and vulnerable to exploitation. As it appears that the private sector is most unprotected and also ignored by the government.
The lavish pay scale that the government has offered to bureaucrats showed that a government that is not properly elected by the people is not also accountable to the people. It only wants to appease the bureaucracy to stay in power. But the socio-economic impact of the blindfolded government policy is already agitating other professionals adding new tension at grassroots level. Guardians of private school students will bear the brunt this time. In our view the school management should review the fees to make it tolerable to lower income parents.
