Haryana schools can’t charge more than a month’s fee from students opting to leave

CHANDIGARH: In what might come as a huge relief to many, the Haryana school education department has directed all private and government schools in the state to not to charge fee or funds for more than a month from students opting to leave the school.

The state directorate of school education, in its instruction sent last week to all the district education officers for adherence, categorically said that the tuition fee and funds were being charged quarterly or monthly in advance in private and government schools from students seeking to leave school. “Such practice of forcing a student to pay for services he never intended to receive or never received, was creating a regime of forced fee collections,” the instruction read.

Director, school education, Rajiv Rattan, told HT that the department had been receiving plethora of complaints from students in the context.

“These anomalies persisted not only in some government schools but also in private schools which resorted to such tactics as charging tuition fee for full quarter and annual funds even from the students who sought school leaving certificate from the schools,” he elaborated.

Senior officials said that while in case of government schools, the fee was meagre but in private schools, it was high which hurt the students hard.

“Charging of any fee or fund should be only up to the month in which the school leaving certificate (SLC) was sought by the student. If a school had already charged annual or quarterly or half yearly advance charges then all such charges shall, henceforth, be retained by the only up to the month of SLC request and rest of the charges be refunded,” said Virender Singh, department joint secretary. He added that the school could retain the pro rata charges only for the services a student received in the school upto the month when he applied for leaving the school.

Importantly enough, the instructions further specifically held that provided that for practicality sake, it has been decided that there would be no refund if the total amount to be refunded comes out to be less than ₹500.

“This would be cardinal principle of all campuses and any extortion in guise of completing the school accounts would be deprecated,” it summed up.