Raipur: Taking action against private schools pressurizing parents to deposit school fees, Raipur District Education Officer (DEO) has issued an order to cancel the affiliation of 240 schools.

These schools will not have the right to enroll students from session 2021-22. According to the order issued, the schools whose recognition has been terminated have to submit the registration register of the school children, admission register, the list of children filed under the Right to Education Act and other relevant documents in the Block Education Officer office at the earliest. The Block Education Officer and Nodal Principal will be responsible to shift the children studying in these schools to the nearest school.

The education officials said that private schools have been pressurizing parents to deposit the school fees since lockdown imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus. Despite the order and instructions of the state and education authorities, the schools continued to do so. The parents are facing a lot of difficulties due to no fixation of fees by the committee concerned. Disputes over fees of some schools across the state including the capital have also reached the police and school education department.

Private schools in the capital have minimum nursery and first class fees ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 1.50 lakh, while in engineering colleges the minimum fees range from Rs 30,000 to maximum Rs 65,000 per year. There are more than 15 lakh students studying in 12,000 private schools in the state. Under the new Act of the state government, a fee follow-up committee is to be set up in all private schools, but out of this, there are 240 schools that have not constituted the committee. Therefore their recognition has been cancelled, said the officials.