About thousands of people have signed a petition to prevent the closure of one of the UK’s largest independent Hindu faith school, the Swaminarayan School in London. The school was run by the Akshar Educational Trust, had it set up at 1992 and announced it’s plans to stop the school as they have the long-term plan of exiting the educational sector by July 2020. Parents couldn’t take this and have organised a campaign to save the “school of excellence” from closure.
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“In a letter to parents, a spokesperson for the school blamed ‘increasing regulatory requirements, difficulties in recruitment and retention of teachers, the ready availability of free state-funded Hindu schools, and declining pupil numbers’ for the move. This is simply not true,” notes the Change.org petition, which has attracted nearly 3,500 signatures since last week. “Sensitivity analysis of accounts by experts suggests that with restructuring it is possible for the school to run for the foreseeable future,” it notes.
The parents who have arranged the save the school campaign says many Indian origin families have changed their way of life to enable the children to get an education within the culture of Hinduism at the school. “Parents are more than happy to consider taking over the running of the school by appointing new teams who will give due consideration to the communities and families that are being disrupted by this announcement,” the parents said in a statement.
The school has a GBP 4310 per term fees to enroll their children and most families are happy to pay them. But the trust running the school said that it doesn’t have enough resources to sustain the development required in school, both educationally and also for its infrastructure.
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