Presidency School Bangalore South(PSBS) has been raising annual, tuition and transport in an arbitrary manner every year, for last several years.  The last year's bus transport fee is already 30-50% more than that of other similar schools. However, this year  there has been a hike of more than 20% over the previous year’s slab making it one of the most expansive transport service provided by any school. Even international schools such as Candor have transport service which is way cheaper than that of PSBS . Please see the below sheet caomparing transport fee charged by schools here

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qiuYW-3Wjzk5oUwCdSHfTrlkDzP06l4S-Q2qWzsikHA/edit?usp=sharing

Other schools in the region have retained the same bus transport fee or only marginally increased it (be less than 5%) for the current year. Moreover the PSBS transport service and related bus fee has many more anomalies as below

1) The transport fee slabs based on distance are never disclosed by the school. School just sends out the absolute amount that needs to be paid for transport for each child.

2) The transport fee is not announced in advance, or even at the start of the session, but many months after the transport has been subscribed to. This year i.e. 2018, the transport fee with 20-25% hike was announced at the end of August, when 3 months bus service has been already consumed.  This practice cannot be said to fair by any account  (price is assumed to be the same for the service you are already subscribed to, unless hike is intimated in advance ).

3) Questions have been raised on the above point 1 by parents, and some verbal explanation is provided which indicates that distance is calculated by "doubling" the actual distance from schools to home.  No other school calculates distance two-ways (to and from school), only PSBS indulges in this practice. This seems like a Mal-practice

4)  All schools provide substantial sibling discount for transport fee, but PSBS does not provide any or very limited discount.

5) As per the process defined by the education department any fee hikes are need to be approved by PTA(Parent & Teachers Association).  However PTA does not exist for PSBS, so all fee hikes are in effect  may be un-authorized.

6)  GPS service provided through SafeTrax app for tracking Bus does not work for most of the parents

 

Above issues indicate that the transport fee levied by the management is completely unreasonable, in-transparent and  arbitrary.

About 150 parent turned for a meeting with management on 1st September and voiced strong objection to unreasonable hikes every year. We also requested school to come clean on the transport fee and align it to standard fee comparable to markets/other schools.

School management refused to compare the fee with other schools and threatened to stop the bus if the arbitrarily hiked transport fee is not paid. School also claimed that Transport is a cost center and they do not make any profit on the same. Given the claim of cost center, parent requested that the transport expenses made transparent so as to allow us to verify the same, but school flatly refused to do so.

The school management did come back after the meeting with a paltry 3% reduction of the proposed fee, if and only if full payment for the year is made in advance. This is not acceptable to parent of PSBS as it feels the school is taking undue advantage of parent's dependence on school provided transport .

By this petition we request Presidency management to make the transport fee transparent, publish the transport fee slabs, bring it down to market standards and fix basic service gaps as highlighted above. We do appreciate and are happy with PSBS in other respects  including academics. If PSBS  can fix this fee anomaly and set-up PTA in a transparent manner, parents would continue to support the management for better future of our kids. That would be a win-win situation for both School & Parents.

Please sign this petition to support this just cause of having right to have good education for our kids without being penalized, impacts a large number of parents, and is key to maintain good relationship between Parents & School