Bengaluru school 'forcing' children to eat canteen food; parents seek CM Kumaraswamy government's help

Schools in the city have reopened after a long and relaxing summer break. While children are mostly known to be excited about going up to a new class, new uniforms, clean and fresh books and notebooks, the time seems to have come with a few rude shocks for some parents.

A Bengaluru school has reportedly hiked the school fees for the new academic year by about 25 percent and parents are clearly unhappy about it. If that wasn't enough, it has also come up with a new rule that students must mandatorily eat their meals from the school canteen.

Now onwards, students of the particular school will not be permitted to bring food from home and will have to eat whatever the school canteen offers. Parents have been left worried and enraged after they received the information and have questioned the reason behind such a regulation.

They believe that parents should be the ones deciding what their children eat and what they don't and that the school should have no say in such a matter. Some parents told International Business Times India that the decision makes no sense as the school canteen is not even equipped to cater to so many students.

They said that the canteen is also short-staffed and children will have to wait for quite some time to get served.

The parents are now protesting outside the school with placards and have also sought the help of the Kumaraswamy government. One of the placards read: Education minister, are you awake? Help us fight against private school mafia."

The parents have now decided to speak to the school administration and demand that the new policies be rolled back.

Here's what the school has to say 

Greenwood High has now responded to the issue and said that the principal met a few parents and discussed the matter with them. 

The Principal met a delegation of parents and lent an ear to their grievances. He has asked them to give a written application so that he could take a call and address each of the concerns individually. The principal as always been open and has met parents regularly. The fee hike is not as exorbitant as stated. We have never in the history of GWH increased the fee by such the percentage. The Principal is meeting approximately 10 parents daily on a one to one as a regular process to address parents concern if any.

Meanwhile, extremely high school fees have often created issues for parents. In 2017, parents accused private schools in Mumbai of indiscriminately hiking the fees for the 2017-18 academic session and held protests against these institutions. 

They had even raised the issue with the state education minister, but said that no action had been taken. Jayant Jain, president of NGO Forum for Fairness in Education, had at the time said that the parents wanted to resolve the issue out of court, but since no action was taken by the state government, they had no other choice but to take the legal route.