The High Court of Punjab and Haryana on Tuesday, 30^{th<\/sup> June 2020, held that all schools, irrespective of whether they offered online classes during the lock-down period or not, are entitled to collect the tuition fee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n}

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The Court was dealing with a bunch of petitions filed by associations of unaided private schools and parents of school students, challenging the 14^{th<\/sup> May 2020 notification issued by the Director, School Education, imposing curbs on the charging of school fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n}

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The Director, School Education, had in spirit\ndirected that; <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a)     The\ncomplete waiver of fees by the Private Unaided Educational Institutions that\nare not conducting online classes during lockdown period;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

b)    The\nschools giving online classes could charge only the tuition fee for the\nlockdown period;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

c)     The\nschools were restrained from recovering building charges, transport charges,\ncharges for meals meaning thereby, the parents could not be burdened\nwith the costs of any such facility or activity which was not availed by them\nduring the lockdown;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

d)    However,\nthere was no bar of charging the fee for the period of summer break although\nthere is no distinction between the schools providing online or not\nproviding online classes when charging of fees during the summer break is\nconcerned;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

e)     It\nwas advised not to increase the fee during the year 2020-21;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

f)      The\nSchool Management was not authorised to remove any teaching or non-teaching\nstaff;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

g)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The school management could neither stop nor reduce the monthly salary either of the teachers or the staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The single bench of Justice Nirmaljit Kaur<\/strong> issued the following directions;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Schools are permitted to collect their admission fee, henceforth; since the COVID-19<\/a> lockdown has now been lifted. “To remove all confusions, the schools should be allowed to recover their admission fee now that the lock-down stands lifted on 08.06.2020 to a great degree”, the High Court said. Earlier the date to pay the admission fee had been deferred by the Government to a month after the pandemic conditions improve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.     All Schools,\nirrespective of whether they offered online classes during the lockdown period\nor not, are entitled to collect the tuition fee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.     The\nschool management of each schools shall work out their actual expenditure\nincurred under the annual charges for the\nperiod the school remained closed and recover only such genuine expenditure\nincurred by them including actual transport charges and actual building\ncharges but shall not recover any charge for this period for any\nactivity or facility towards which no expenditure was incurred. However, the\nannual charges for the remaining period shall be recovered as already\nfixed by the school;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4.     The schools shall restrain themselves for the reasons, as\nmentioned above, from increasing the fee for the year 2020-21 and adopt\nthe same fee structure as of 2019- 20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5.     Any parent\nnot able to pay the school fee in the above terms may file their application\nalong with necessary proof about their financial status, which shall be\nlooked into by the school- authority and, after looking into it\nsympathetically, give concession or exempt the entire fee, as the case may be.\nIn case the parent is still aggrieved, in any manner, with an adverse\ndecision by the school on his application, he may approach the Regulatory Body,\nso constituted under Section 7 of the Punjab Regulation of fee of Un-aided\nEducational Institutions Act, 2016. No parent\nshall misuse the concession by laying a false claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6.     Section 7 of the Punjab Regulation of fee of Un-aided\nEducational Institutions Act, 2016 is already in place for looking into\nthe complaints of the parents or guardians with regard to charging of any\nexcessive fee or to do any other activity with the motive to give\nfinancial benefit or profit. The parents are at liberty to take recourse\nto the same and, therefore, no specific direction is required to be given by\nthis Court separately;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7.     In case any school is facing a financial crunch for not\nhaving charged the increased fee for the year 2020-21, may move a\nrepresentation to the District Education Officer along with its proof of the\nsame, who shall look into it and pass appropriate orders within three\nweeks of the receipt of such an application. However, this may be\nexercised only in a very hard case where the school is facing financial crunch\nand has no reserved resources to meet the expenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8.     The 14^{th<\/sup>\nMay 2020 directions advising schools against imposing any increase in school\nfees in 2020-21 over those charged in 2019-20; against striking down the\nnames of students from the school rolls and not to debar them from attending\nthe ongoing online classes even if their parents are not in a position to pay\nthe proportionate tuition fee due to loss of their jobs; and against\nresorting to removal of any teacher or reduction in the monthly salary\nor total emoluments of teaching\/non-teaching staff; have been retained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n}

9.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is also no modification in the direction of the order of May 14 that no child will be deprived of attending the schools and online classes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Accepting the petitioners’ arguments, the Court said that the restrictions were arbitrary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“It is not disputed that even if schools do not provide online education, the schools are still required to meet the expenses, i.e. Full salary of the teachers and non-teaching staff as well as building, electricity expenses etc. The schools that are not giving online classes are not exempted from paying the salary of its teaching and non-teaching staff”, said the bench, concluding that there is no rational in laying down such a classification especially when the obligations and basic expenses of all private un-aided schools remain the same irrespective of whether they are conducting online classes or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The judgment further points out that the infrastructure will have to be maintained during this period so that when the children return to schools, the basic amenities to the students in the form of qualified and competent teachers as well as the infrastructure is intact, that it is the own stand of the parents that the grant of recognition to a private school depends upon fulfillment of various requirements including financial status and infrastructure but under no circumstances, the private schools can indulge in profiteering or business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The High Court of Punjab and Haryana on Tuesday, 30th June 2020, held that all schools, irrespective of whether they offered online classes during the lock-down period or not, are entitled to collect the tuition fee. The Court was dealing with a bunch of petitions filed by associations of unaided private schools and parents ofRead more about IRRESPECTIVE OF ONLINE CLASSES OFFERED OR NOT, SCHOOLS ENTITLED TO COLLECT TUITION FEE FOR LOCKDOWN PERIOD – PUNJAB & HARYANA HIGH COURT<\/span>[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}