Parents of students at English-medium schools, organised as the Bangladesh English Medium Schools Forum, held a press conference in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, in September, to demand that between 30 and 60 per cent of tuition fees be waived for classes that are currently only being held online.
The Daily Star newspaper reported speakers from the Forum as alleging that many schools banned students from online classes if their parents had not paid “full tuition”, despite many parents suffering severe financial hardship during the coronavirus lockdown.
Forum president AKM Ashraful Haque called for rebates on fees, with a percentage based on whether schools owned their own premises or had to rent their campuses. There were also calls for “school management committees” to be set up, through which parents could input into quality assurance.
