At least 45,000 private schools affiliated to the Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education will stage sit-in protests across the state from September 2 to demand reopening of schools for all classes in compliance with COVID-19 safeguards.

The Madhya Pradesh Private School Association wants schools to reopen for all classes with a standard operating procedure in place immediately, president of the association Ajeet Singh said on Thursday. The association is not going to suspend online classes or physical classes for students of classes IX to class XII held on different days in a week," Singh said. He further demanded that the state government pay the dues of private schools that have provided education to unprivileged children under Right to Education (RTE), he said.

The state government has not paid dues accumulated under RTE in the last three years," he added. Among other demands, private schools also want the state government to immediately scrap the annual renewals of recognition of schools. We are being asked to pay around Rs 20,000 annual school recognition renewal fees. We have already incurred huge losses due to the pandemic and are not in a position to pay school recognition renewal fees," Singh said.