💬 A boy near our lane was struck off his school over unpaid fees

There is a boy in a lane near ours, I will call him Rahul, who was 12 when his school struck his name off in the middle of the term. The balance on his fees was about 11,000 rupees. His father worked as a daily wage labourer on a construction site, earning around 600 rupees on the days there was work. After rent, rations and his younger sister's medicine, there was never much left for the fee reminders in Rahul's bag. The family had asked for more time twice, once in person at the school office and once in writing. One Monday Rahul walked to school as usual and a clerk at the gate told him to go home, his name was no longer on the register. He sat outside the gate for almost an hour before walking back. His father heard that evening. He did not shout at anyone. He just went quiet for 2 days, working his shift and saying almost nothing. On the third day he collapsed at the site. The government hospital said it was a massive heart attack. His wife sold her wedding bangles that same week to cover the ICU deposit, but he did not survive the night. Rahul is back in school now. A private trust cleared his dues after a neighbour posted about the family online. His mother works in two houses as domestic help to keep the sister's medicine going. Nobody from the old school has called them since. A neighbour who knows the family told me all this, and I keep thinking about that gate. Should a school be allowed to remove a child like that, in the middle of the term?

The school has to take responsibility here, the father's life was lost directly because of the stress caused by his son's sudden termination from school over unpaid fees. Whatever the financial policy might technically say, there has to be some basic humanity involved when dealing with a struggling family, especially when it comes to something as serious as a child's education being taken away without proper warning or support offered first.

In my opinion, directly blaming the school entirely for someone's death might not be fair, since a heart attack could have separate underlying medical causes unrelated to the school's decision. That said, school management should absolutely show basic humanity and flexibility when dealing with financially struggling students rather than applying rigid policy without consideration for individual circumstances. Education is everyone's right, so the government should also focus on regulating fee policies and properly monitoring private schools overall.