Parents fear schools hiked fees in disguise of NEP-2020 skills

Vidya N (name changed), whose child is studying class VIII in AVN School, said “I have got to know that the students will be taught new skill sets like financial literacy, technical, self-defence, survival skills, social etiquette, public speaking, and stress management.” But who will teach them is not known. Given the current situation, the school might rope in people from outside by outsourcing them. “Already, we have to pay extra amounts whenever events and extracurricular activities are held. How much the schools are going to bill for imparting the new skills is still under wraps, and they will let us know by the end of December,” she added.

The NEP-2020 sets the ground for imparting 12 skill sets from Class VII to Class 10+2. They include information literacy, technological literacy, media literacy, financial literacy, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, leadership, productivity, social, and flexibility.

Hyderabad: At a time when parents are struggling to meet the growing school fees and gathering their act to cope with the yet-to-know schoolfor the ensuing academic year, several schools have informed that a set of new skill learning will be introduced.

The reason is the impact of New Education Policy 2020 (NEP-2020) in the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) schools.

The students are already learning coding and computers as part of their curriculum. Newspaper reading is adopted by several schools where pupils from our apartment are studying. Two schools in the vicinity where my children are studying are also experimenting with the them by conducting cooking classes. For which we have to pay for the purchase of vegetables. But there is no clue as to who will teach things like financial literacy, productivity, and others, says Raghuram Reddy from Musapet.

S Pramod pointed out that the problem of hiking fees is a clear case of schools playing on the ambitions of parents towards their wards. Equally, the school lacks the basic ethics to provide quality education and sticks to delivering what they promise during admissions. “The majority of schools are run on rampantly commercial equations. This is where they are asking for the intervention of a mechanism to regulate fees,” he added.