Hyderabad: Uproar over single fee-payment mode in CBSE schools

Hyderabad: Of late, there has been a spate of oral protests from parents opposing payment of fees through ECS as the mandatory mode by some corporate schools like CHIREC. Parents have been saying that such schools were not giving any other option like online payment, UPI or payment through debit card or credit card.

According to school managements, collecting fees through ECS mode helps the schools not only to get assured and timely payment of fees but also helps them from doing away with the burden of maintenance of records pertaining to fee payment as all that would be handled by the fintech companies which are start-ups by those who passed out of IIT and other such institutes.

But the catch here is that some fintech companies like Jodo with which schools like CHIREC have tied up give names of only a few banking institutions for enabling the ECS. In turn, forcing parents to open new bank accounts and give ECS consent for auto-debit from their bank accounts.

A parent Raghava Rao (name changed), whose children are studying in high secondary in the school's Kondapur branch told Hans India that it was not correct on the part of the schools to force them to opt for ECS and give post-dated cheques.

Sri Latha (name changed) said the school had informed them it was mandatory for every parent to register with the Jodo company's payment system. It is a policy decision of the school management, they told her.

Since it is the policy decision of the management, the school principals are also pleading helplessness. “I don’t understand why the government does not take any action on this,” she added. When contacted, a top official of the CBSE regional office, Chennai, said, "The general guidelines issued to all the schools was that they should follow the fee structure mandated by respective state governments and the rules and regulations governing the fee payments.

Parents can lodge complaints with the local DEO or state education authorities concerned. If there was any dispute,” he said.

Confirming this policy, Hyderabad District Education Officer R Rohini said that she had not received any complaints regarding the schools unilaterally imposing a single payment mode on parents of the CBSE schools falling under her jurisdiction.

Officials say that in case of CBSE-affiliated schools, parents should file a complaint with the DEO for necessary action. Why they are hesitating, to do so? They ask.

But the issue here is that most of these schools have different curriculums like CBSE, International Baccalaureate (IB), etc. They say they cannot have different mode of fee collection for each system.

It may be mentioned here that the CHIREC school had tied up with Jodo, a fintech start-up building payment solutions company, to collect education payments. Parents say that the school had neither consulted nor sought their views before rolling out the new payment method.