Missed Call Campaign to Support Regulation on Private School Fees in India: Facts

Story:

Request everyone in India to give a call to 8686004050 to support regulation on private school fees…no charges just click call that’s it ..I did it just now, it’s not fake. Also got an SMS after the call.

Picture about Missed Call Campaign to Support Regulation on Private School Fees in India — Missed Call Campaign to Support Regulation on Private School Fees in India

Analysis:

The story shared heavily on social media sites asks everyone in India to give a missed call to the number 8686004050 to support regulation on private school fees. Yes, it is a fact, but the missed call campaign is only valid in Telangana state of India; not for the entire country as such.

Public Hearing

On 22 April 2016, Joint Action Committee for School Fee Regulation (JAC-SFR) and Hyderabad Schools Parents’ Association (HSPA) organized a public hearing on increasing Private School Fees at Press club in Basheerbagh, Hyderabad, in Telangana state of India. About 70 parents including academicians gathered together to prepare an agenda on the fee hike issue in private schools. Expert panel listened to the grievances of parents, who complained that many private schools are increasing fees every year and are more interested in fees than imparting education to children. Professor Shanta Sinha, a child rights activist said that the constitution provides the right to education to everyone, and schools cannot deny anyone on the pretext that they are unable to pay capitation fee. She added that the Right To Education (RTE) Act has mandated to form a school management committee in each school with the parents as members so that all kind of grievances can be addressed in the committee itself, but hardly any school in the city has such a committee.

Missed Call Campaign

At the a public hearing on increasing private school fees on 22 April 2016, the distraught parents launched a missed call campaign to promote their demand for regulation of fee structure in private schools. Accordingly, the parents who could not join the resentment against school fee hikes can register their support for the cause by giving a missed call to number 8686004050. The Joint Action Committee for School Regulation Fee would make a list of the callers and submit a petition to pressurize the government to take actions on the issue. But as mentioned above, the missed call campaign is only valid to the concerned parents of school children in Telangana state, not the entire nation of India.

Telangana Government Actions

On 1 May 2016 Hyderabad Schools Parents’ Association HSPA posted on their Facebook page that 1,25,000 parents have shown their resentment by dialling the 8686004050 number and to support the ‘stop fee hike’ campaign of JAC SFR and HSPA.

After few days of launching the missed call campaign, Telangana Deputy CM Kadiyam Srihari spoke to media over private school fee structure and said that the TRS (Telangana Rashtra Samithi) government will take steps to control private school fees in Telangana state. He also mentioned that the government decided to bring new infrastructure to keep a control on private school fees across the Telangana state so as to reduce the burden on parents. The parents of school children were happy about the changes from government and also asked to take severe actions against private school institutions that are collecting high fees against rules. Shown in the video below is a Telugu news report on the same.