During the hearing of a bunch of petitions filed by private unaided schools of Rajasthan against the state government’s order to give up 30 percent of the tuition fee during the COVID-19<\/a> pandemic, the bench agreed that schools had to reduce the fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Apex Court asked schools and\neducational institutions not to debar any student from attending online or\nphysical classes due to any outstanding or non-payment of fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With offline classes and campus facilities remaining closed during COVID-19<\/a> pandemic, educational institutions and schools should reduce fees as the running costs have come down, perceive Supreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bench of Justice A.M.\nKhanwilkar and Justice Dinesh Maheshwari said that schools must not be insensitive\nto the problems faced by people amid the COVID-19 pandemic and should help\nstudents and their parents in these difficult times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In law, the school\nmanagement cannot collect fees in respect of activities and facilities which\nare, in fact, not provided to or availed of by its students due to\ncircumstances beyond their control. Demanding fees even in respect of overheads\non such activities would be nothing short of indulging in profiteering and commercialization.\nIt is a well-known fact and judicial notice can also be taken that due to\ncomplete lockdown, schools were not allowed to open for substantially long\nperiod during the academic year 2020-21. Resultantly, the school management\nmust have saved overheads and recurring costs on various items such as\npetrol\/diesel, electricity, maintenance cost, water charges, stationery\ncharges, etc,” the bench stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It stated that the appellants are justified in assailing the order\nbut they must not be rigid and insensitive to the aftermath of the pandemic.\nThe bench said that the school management supposedly engaged in doing\ncharitable activity of imparting education must take necessary remedial\nmeasures to mitigate the hardship suffered by students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It is for the school management to reschedule payment of school fees in such a way that not even a single student is left out or denied opportunity of pursuing his\/her education, so as to effectuate the adage \u2013\u00a0LIVE & LET LIVE<\/a>“, the court said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The appellants shall collect the annual school fees from their students as fixed under the Act of 2016,\u00a0but by providing deduction of 15 percent on that amount in lieu of unutilized facilities by students during the relevant period of academic year 2020-21,” said the bench. The overheads and operational costs must have been saved but none of the parties produced accurate empirical data, bench agreed and said. It concluded that thus it assumes that school managements must have saved 15 percent of annual school fees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the hearing of a bunch of petitions filed by private unaided schools of Rajasthan against the state government’s order to give up 30 percent of the tuition fee during the COVID-19 pandemic, the bench agreed that schools had to reduce the fees. The Apex Court asked schools and educational institutions not to debar anyRead more about SCHOOLS MUST REDUCE FEES AS CAMPUS FACILITIES REMAIN CLOSED DUE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC – SUPREME 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\/395"}],"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=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ethicallegal.in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}