‘Violation of parents’ rights’

“Amazingly, the KG fee at ISGhubra (which is under the same management and uses the same curriculum) is OMR41.5, which is OMR2 higher than the main school. This means, we have an increase of more than 100 per cent in seven years’ time, a phenomenon that was virtually unknown till the year 2011,” the memorandum read.

“You once again failed to take the parents into confidence and discuss with them before taking decisions that violate the rights of parents, despite earlier agreements from the Board of Directors and SMC that crucial recommendations such as this one will be discussed in parent open forums before being finalised,” the parents added.

“While the school was running with the old fee of OMR19 until 2011, it could accumulate a lot of surplus, which was not only invested in building other schools, but it also succeeded in keeping millions of rials as fixed deposits in the bank,” the memorandum said. The parents said many of them could ill afford a hike because their salaries were not enough. “One of the most crucial responsibilities that SMC has to keep in its agenda is that ISM is a community school and the parents in the lower income strata don’t have any other educational facility for their kids. The members of the school committee—almost always from elite and affluent economic backgrounds—have shown little appreciation of this reality,” it read. The parents also complained of an earlier cost effective plan being ignored.

“As a thorough investigation by a parent committee in 2016 demonstrated there is absolutely no requirement to increase the fees and an efficient school management can actually save a lot of extra money for better pay for teachers and for infrastructure development from the existing fee structure. But unfortunately, both the SMC and BOD refused to consider this,” the memorandum added.