Thirteen-year-old Rohit Kumar sat up all night on July 19 preparing for his unit test in mathematics. But the next morning, when he tried t...
Thirteen-year-old Rohit Kumar sat up all night on July 19 preparing for his unit test in mathematics. But the next morning, when he tried to log into the online platform used by his school in Gurugram, Haryana, he was unable to.
“It kept saying the password had been changed eight hours ago,” recalled Kumar, whose actual name has been withheld on request. The Class 8 student missed out on the test. “I was really sad because I was 100% prepared for it.”
The school authorities told his parents that a “technical glitch” had prevented him from accessing the online platform. But when the glitch continued for over a week, the parents grew convinced that the school had deliberately locked their son out of online classes because they had refused to pay the annual fee of Rs 32,000, in addition to the monthly tuition fees of Rs 6,000, which they paid regularly.
Kumar’s school campus had been closed to students since March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began. “If the students are not able to use the school facilities, then what is the point of paying the full fees,” his father reasoned.
At least seven other students whose parents hadn’t paid the annual fees had been...
