school in jvlr but after i stepped down as ceo and started my own venture i initially took a loan to pay the fee but i could not cope with a fee hike said om pradhan a parenta new survey by pnb metlife and nielsen iq revealed parents are spending up to rs 53 lakh a year on their childrens education and extracurricular activities and are even willing to make lifestyle adjustments the research titled financial planning in the era of rising education cost which explores the needs influences and barriers for parents planning their childrens education was conducted in april 2023 more than one in three parents misjudge the expense they would incur and end up overshooting their budget by 27 said sameer bansal chief distribution officer of the insurance firmtake the example of milind j name changed whose two children study at a thane school he took a personal loan of rs 5 lakh to cover overheads including fees all of it has to be paid by september he said another parent has pledged his gold for rs 26 lakh the principal refuted claims that parents are not informed about late fees we regularly communicate everything to parents she said what about the above10 fee hike for 202324 and the lack of instalment options we have followed these schedules for years during the pandemic we did not increase fees this year we have so next year we wont she saidthe dearth of good affordable schools leaves parents to grapple with the question of what quality education is sudhir though bats for a public education model if you have good schools why would parents not pay what are good schools anyway any school can be turned into an achcha school he saidmumbai for parents of schoolchildren the pandemic has been a double whammy while they are still to get their covidhit finances in order they have had to resort to borrowings to meet the rising costs of schooling too from taking loans paying emis on school fees seeking more instalment options and switching to government schools the act of balancing quality education with how deep ones pocket is seems to be getting trickier by the day broken by the pandemic and a simultaneous fee hike at a private cbse school in dadar where his kindergartener studied mahim resident sudhir k named changed decided to shift his daughter to a bmcrun school offering the cbse curriculum which started in 2020 an event management professional sudhir could stay afloat that year thanks to goodwill money paid by his employer there was no work he said a year into online classes the school decided to increase fees i decided enough was enough i started applying through rte in other schools but did not make it there were no other affordable private cbse schools in my locality said sudhir but while for him the choice was shifting schools poorer parents are left with few options and may even have to withdraw children from