The Jammu and Kashmir Governor’s administration has issued notices to 19 private schools for charging “exorbitant” fee and forcing parents to purchase non-prescribed books and stationery from selected vendors in Jammu.
The Directorate of School Education Jammu has given threedays’ time to reply to the notices issued to the principals of these 19schools.
“Complaints have been received from the parentsregarding charging of exorbitant fee without the approval of competentauthority, the parents are being forced to purchase school books (notprescribed by the authority) and stationery items from selective vendors atvery high rates”, Director School Education Jammu Anuradha Gupta said inthe notice to principals here.
She said that in order to verify the complaints, thedirectorate had constituted teams, which submitted their reports to it.
The reports revealed that these schools had introduced booksother than those prescribed by the competent authority — CBSE/ NCERT/JKBOSE(Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education) — up to the middle level, which amounts to violations of the rules governingthe permission, recognition and affiliation of these schools, she said.
“You are also violating the orders of the Fee FixationCommittee regarding fee structure and the orders of the High Court aswell”, the Director said in the notice.
“Therefore, before proceeding further, you are herebyasked to explain your position within three days, failing which necessaryaction as warranted under rules shall be initiated against you which includesde-recognition,” she said.
Jammu witnessed protests from parents against variousschools for exorbitant fees and forcing parents to purchase books, stationeryand uniforms of various types from schools itself or from selective vendors inthe city.Prestigious educational institutes such as K CPublic School, Heritage School, British International School, PresentationConvent Senior secondary school, Doon International School, BanyanInternational School, JK Public School, IAF School are among the 19 schoolswhich got the notice.