Several schools have received applications from parents asking for transfer certificates of their children this academic year.

During exit interviews or when they communicated with the parents, the schools found out that the parents had suffered financial loss during the pandemic and hence, wanted to shift their children to a school with lower fees or of vernacular medium, the heads of at least two schools said.

The number of requests for pulling out children is not many but more than other years, school heads said.

What is different this year is that the transfer certificates are needed mostly because parents are not shifting to other cities but to native places.

A school head said they had come across instances of parents shifting to their “native places or districts”.

“There are some parents who applied for transfer certificates around November when we asked parents to clear their fees (following the court order). During the exit interview, when we asked them the reason, they said they would put their children in a vernacular-medium school where the fees will be less,” said Richard Gasper, the principal of St Augustine’s Day School in Calcutta.

Gasper said parents cited reasons like loss in business and salary-cuts for being unable to let their children continue in an English-medium school of their choice. The requests for transfer certificates have been mostly coming since December. But there were some before December, too.

“The parents said they are going back to their native places and hence, they want transfer certificates,” said an official in a CBSE school in the city.

“There are families who were living in Calcutta on rent and they have moved back to the places or districts where they came from. Some of them said they cannot afford and they will put their children in government schools nearby,” said Sucharita Roychowdhury, the headmistress at Silver Point School.

Roychowdhury said parents of students in primary or middle school were at least seeking transfer certificates. The exodus is more at the pre-primary level, where parents are not even informing the authorities.

“In nursery or kindergarten, parents are not even asking for transfer certificates. They are just pulling out their children and not coming back for readmission,” she said.

he schools are letting go of those in pre-primary or junior classes without seeking much details but they are trying to deal more sympathetically with students in higher classes.

“We don’t get such requests in other years. But this year while a few are choosing to move out, we are also trying to retain some by talking to the parents, especially whose children are in senior classes,” said Jessica Gomes Surana, the principal at Loreto Convent Entally.

At Saifee Golden Jubilee School, a couple of parents requested to pull out their children citing financial difficulties.

One of the students is in Class X and the father, who runs a small shop, said he was finding it difficult to continue with the business, which had suffered a huge blow because of the pandemic.

“The school counselled him and dissuaded him from withdrawing his child as it would have ruined the child's career. The school gave him a generous extension of the fee deadline. Finally, he agreed not to pull out his child,” said Huzaifa Motiwala, a committee member of the school.