Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (MS)

Bengaluru, Apr 19: With the lockdown in place at least till May 3, several higher educational institutions have started conducting online classes in order to keep up with the syllabus and ensure that their students are continually learning.

The state education department has issued an order instructing private educational institutions not to charge any fee for online classes.

In a meeting conducted under the presidentship of education minister Suresh Kumar, it was decided that the government would not have any objection to the online classes conducted by private educational institutions. However, the committee said that it should be done free of cost and there should not by any pressure on the parents to pay fee.

The education department has already sent a circular to all the educational institutions directing them to not collect admission fee and other fee for the academic year 2020-21 for the time being.

Private schools collecting fee, defying government order?

Despite government order, complaints are being heard that private schools have started collecting admission fee for the new academic year though admission and fee collection process has been postponed by the state government.

Some prestigious schools have resorted to collecting fee on the pretext of conducting online classes for students, it is learnt. Some institutions have also sent email and SMS messages to this effect to the parents with a deadline for paying the fee, it is said.

The message sent by the management of a school says, "Due to lockdown, the students have been promoted to the next standard. It is not possible to start classes for the academic year 2020-21 on the specified dates. So we are going to start online classes from April 22. E-books are also available through mobile app. So the fee needs to be paid before April 22."