Nursery fee ‘padding’ makes parents sulk

While parents are thrilled about their children attending nursery classes, there is constant rue in the air about the additional fees they have been charged for the food and bus facilities of the first quarter. Schools have charged parents the entire fees for the first quarter on the grounds that a lot of their resources were spent in vain. Agitating parents expressed their displeasure over the move of the school saying that children never attended school, which means that facilities like food and bus transit were not spent by the schools.

According to Sumit Vohra, founder, admissionsnursery.com, schools are charging for bus services on the grounds that their seats went vacant. However, parents are saying that since the nursery classes had not even started, buses had not made any change in their route. “Buses have fixed stations, so it is not like they have gone out of their way or anything, but they should at least release the money paid for bus service as that is an additional thing,” said Vohra.

A parent whose child is studying in the GD Goenka Public School, Dwarka said that the school had even charged them for food for the full year. “I filed an application requesting the refund of the money spent on food at least. But the school authorities completely declined to do so. In fact, to justify them taking the money they have even extended their school by a week and will now probably only shut for summer vacations end of May. This means that our kids will have to go to school in the heat,” said the parent.

However, there are exceptions of a few schools like Bal Bharati Public School that don’t charge for these facilities at all. This has further infuriated parents as they feel that schools are cashing on their situation. A parent from East Delhi said that there is no sort of relief in spite of schools starting sessions. “First the child never got a chance to attend the first quarter and now that he is attending school, we are being denied the refund of money that we should rightfully be getting. Even if we take into consideration the resources spent on buses, there is no way charging for food can be justified. It’s not like food was cooked and then wasted,” he added.