KATHMANDU, April 25: Demanding implementation of the Education Directives 2015, student unions affiliated with all major parties encricled the Department of Education (DoE) on Wednesday.
The Education Directives 2015 states that private schools should take consent of the guardians before hiking the tuition fees. However, most of the private schools are found to have increased the tuition fees by ignoring the directives.
Joint student unions stage whistle rally against school fee hik...
Private schools have increased the tuition fees by up to 30 percent and charged up to Rs 200,000 as admission fees for the new academic session which started from April 14. Also, the private schools have charged readmission fees against the rules. There are about 6,000 private (institutional) schools across the country.
The student unions said their members and supporters staged protest at the DoE on Wednesday against the fee hike and illegal collection of readmission fees by private schools. There was a kind of scuffle between demonstrators and government officials as the student unions blocked the entrance off the DoE at around 10 am.
The student unions include All Nepal National Free Student Union (ANNFSU), affiliated to CPN-UML, Nepal Student Union (NSU), affiliated to Nepali Congress and All Nepal National Independent Student Union-Revolutionary (ANNISU-R), and affiliated to CPN (Maoist Center).
If the government does not address our demands immediately, we will call an education strike, said Pushpa Kumar Shahi, vice president of the NSU. "We are planning to stage sit-in at the offices of local bodies on April 27," he added.
The student unions had earlier demanded that the ninth amendment to the Education Act (2017) be scrapped arguing that the amendment aimed to hire 'incompetent' teachers in the teaching system.
