Student affiliated to major political parties clashed with security personnel during a protest outside the District Education Offices (DEOs) in Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur on Friday. 

The student unions known as United Student Unions (USU) including Nepali Congress aligned Nepal Student Union (NSU), CPN-UML aligned All Nepal National Free Students Union (ANNFSU), CPN (Maoist Centre) aligned All Nepal National Independent Students Union-Revolutionary (ANNISU-R), among others, have been protesting against the arbitrary fee hike by the private schools. Some of the students demonstrating outside DEO Kathmandu in Tahachal injured during the clash. 

The USU have been agitating against the exorbitant fees charged by the private schools as well as the cavalier attitude of the private and government regulatory bodies since last Tuesday. 

In course of the protests, the cadres of the USU had padlocked over 100 private schools in Kathmandu Valley and the offices of PABSON, N-PABSON, the organisations of private schools in the country. 

Their demand for the private schools is to comply with the standard fee determined by the government as the admission fee and monthly tuition fee and return the excess amount to parents, said ANNFSU Secretary RC Lamichhane. 

Lamichhane said that more stern protest will be held against the violation of the government set standard fees. 

According to him, the USU is firm on its stance not to sit for talks with the government until the private schools start to return the excess amount to parents. 

The meeting of the USU held on Thursday decided to extend the protest programme across the country and boycott school operations. RSS