Parents Seek Reduction In Private School Fees Post Pandemic
                     Parents Seek Reduction In Private School Fees Post 
Pandemic
B.K Vijay 
Experienced writer at Hyderabad india online 
(HIOC), content about hyderabad from HIOC 
and telugu saree under shopping are popular.
Apart from the health hazards, the outbreak of COVID-19 has come with 
several other adverse effects too. Prime among them is the job losses. With 
various industries and businesses shut during the lockdown, employees have 
lost their source of income. At such a time, it is quite hard for many parents to 
continue paying the full school fees for their children.
This is especially relevant in the case of parents who send their children to 
private schools as these schools are typically known to be more expensive. A 
large section of parents is now demanding a reduction in the fees of private 
schools. Apart from their own financial constraints due to the pandemic, they 
have brought up several other reasonable arguments.
Infrastructure: When schools are providing online classes, the students are no 
longer using the infrastructure of the school. This is helping the schools to save 
on electricity costs, maintenance costs, etc. On the other hand, many parents 
are now required to provide their children with the infrastructure necessary to 
attend online classes. This includes laptops, PCs, furniture, etc. Moreover, high-
speed internet is crucial for attending online classes.
Events: The expensive private schools host a variety of events ranging from 
sports to science festivals. In most cases, a lumpsum amount is included within 
the total fees for such events. Now that it is impossible to conduct such events, 
it makes no sense to charge fees for those. The cancellation of event fees is 
another major demand made by the parents.
Facilities: Schools require costs to run and maintain facilities such as labs, 
libraries, sports, etc. This reflects in the certain amount which the schools 
included within the fee structure. However, none of these facilities are being 
used with the schools shut. Like events and transportation fees, this is another 
fee that the parents want to be exempted from.
Transport fees: At a time when the children aren’t going to school for months 
and classes are being conducted online, transport fees naturally seem 
unreasonable. After all, nobody would want to pay for a service they aren’t 
using. Many parents have collectively approached the authorities of the 
respective schools and asked for a cancellation of school bus fees.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, prices of many services have been re-
negotiated down. Rents have especially come down. The same is being 
expected by parents with school management – they want everything except 
teacher fees to be reduced.
Parents dissatisfied with the unresponsiveness of schools management to fee 
reduction demands
While a few schools negotiated with the parents and reduced fees to some 
extent, most didn’t. The schools would still need to pay the teachers, non-
teaching staff, and school bus operators. As all types of schools are only 
conducting online classes – schooling has become only interaction with the 
teacher and students. Microsoft has also given free access to MS Teams to 
schools till December 2020. Expensive private schools have much scope to 
reduce fees considerably. The low-cost private schools, on the other hand, 
cannot reduce the fees much as they have a very little surplus over costs.
Some state governments like Telangana have asked schools to only charge 
tuition fees. However, many expensive schools have just labeled their entire 
fee as tuition fees. While regulation says that tuition fees are that component 
in which 65% of the fees collected should be paid towards the salaries and 
statutory dues of the teachers. This is not being followed and seems the 
government officials are waiting for political sanction before pursuing this 
matter with the schools.
Changing perceptions of parents to school education
Until the crisis emerged, many parents used to send their children to expensive 
schools. The prime reason behind this was the good financial situation of the 
parents, the brand image of the schools, and the desire of parents to send 
their kids to upmarket school.
In these upmarket schools – various events were regularly conducted with help 
of event managers and the school used to create great experiences for the 
parents. Now that these events are no longer available due to the lockdown, 
they no longer want to keep paying for those.
The coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent financial crisis have made 
parents realize the unpredictability of the future. In general, they have become 
cautious about high costs for long periods of time. School education in decent 
private schools is causing the parents 15 to 40 Lakhs in fees per school kid in 12 
years of schooling.
Most parents have not gone to such schools to do well in their life. This 
realization in parents is causing them to seek non-fancy schools for their 
children and cut the avoidable high costs of fancy schools.
About Hyderabad India Online
Hyderabad-india-online.com (HIOC) is a website about Hyderabad city in India that 
publishes information updates, tips, and practical insights on Hyderabad markets, 
shopping, real estate, maps etc. The Hyderabad Info section and business limelight 
series of HIOC are popular. Some content published in this website is in 
collaboration with Marvist Digital Marketing.
Thank you for spending your precious time in reading this article!