Deal with parents, not students on fee issues: NCPCR

New Delhi: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has said that the children should not be harassed for non-payment of fees and there should be no discriminating behaviour of the school authorities, for which the child rights body had written to chief secretaries of all states.

According to NCPCR, reported cases of suicidal deaths of school students due to harassment for non-payment of school fee by the authorities are a grave concern. The commission has been receiving numerous complaints from all over the country where children are being harassed by the schools. "This is a gross violation of Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and protection of children) Act of which the NCPCR is the monitoring authority," said NCPCR official.

Priyank Kanoongo, a member from NCPCR, told Millennium Post that the commission had written letters to all the chief secretaries across the country including Delhi in this regard.

"It may be mentioned that the school fee is a financial matter between the school authorities and the parents, therefore, it is to be dealt with the parents and not with children," said the official.

The child rights body wanted concerned agencies to issue directions to the private school authorities to deal all the fee-related issues with the parents and not with students and prevent fee-related harassment and suicidal deaths among the school students. Recently, the commission had found 13.5 per cent of principals are not in favor of admissions of the children from Economically Weaker Section (EWS) and Disadvantaged Sections (DG).

The 22-page report of NCPCR claimed that principals and schools informed the the child rights body that EWS students are more prone to initiating a fight with other children or stealing stationary items such as pencil box or pen.

"Abusive language and misbehavior by EWS category students are more difficult to solve due to wrong precedents set in the home environment," claimed the report.

As per the analysis, South Delhi has the lowest shortfall with average 3 per cent while North East Delhi has an alarming shortfall of 14 per cent.