Parental Expectation in Private School

By: Prem Prasad Sigdel

Private schools in Nepal have served almost 20% of students in total. There are almost 12000 private schools in the country. Their number and craze has been growing day by day. The expectations of the parents and the investors have meet to a certain point so that they have engaged in the school to educate their children. But parental expectation sometimes exceeds the limit what the schools have given.

I have been running private school as private business since the starting of my career 10 years before. The parents are of various types as I have been facing them. I divide them into three categories: careless, understanding and complaining. The number of complaining parents is less but they have created problem in the school due to their unnecessary expectations.

Yesterday, one of the boys of class two had met an accident. He had got a cut on the forehead. We called the guardians and the mother had received the phone not the father. I didn’t know the incident first because one of the teachers had already taken him to hospital. I tried phone to his mother but she didn’t receive as she had already gone to the clinic she mightn’t receive the phone of being angry.

The school can do some emergency treatment if some accident has taken place in the school. The child met the accident while playing with his friends. As heard one of his friends had pushed him while playing. He was collided on the desk and got a cut on his forehead. We took that boy to a clinic calling his mother.

The mother came to school to carry his bag after she took her son to home. She was in an angry mood as I saw her. She had shown her angriness to me though I tried to comfort her. As security guard said she exchanged some rough words by the gate also. She is one of the complaining guardians of the school. She has followed only a little system of the school or she has had the habit of challenging school rules.

She has the belief that her money could buy each and everything. The school has taken fee which is too less in comparison to the government expenditure to per child. But she has complained in such a way that the school should provide each and everything according to her expectation. She has even quarreled with some teachers and the administration has regarded her as one of the notable guardians among few others.

These sorts of guardians have complained without any base. They just complain for the sake of complain or they aren’t ready to accept the system of the school. They showed much love to their children. They don’t have any respect to the teachers neither towards school. The teachers and school also treat them in the same way. If they find any mistake, they will extend it to all the guardians sitting by the gate. However, they couldn’t influence other as their behavior has been known by others.

In some sense these guardians are the source of improvement of the school as they have pointed out small mistakes in the school. I have been doing accordingly for the improvement of the school evaluating their complains. Their complains aren’t all applicable rather we can take them partly for the improvement of the school.