Siliguri, March 2: Members of the Guardians’ Forum of North Bengal today confined the district inspector of schools for secondary education to his office here for eight hours and extracted an assurance that the state government would tomorrow convey its decision on fee hike by six schools.

The parents were also told that New St John’s School had extended the last date for admission of students promoted to the next classes to March 15. The earlier date was March 5.

The forum members lay siege to Asit Chakraborty’s office at 2.30pm as the directorate of school education had failed to convey the decision by March 1

At a meeting of representatives of the six institutions in Siliguri, officials of the education department and members of the forum on December 16, it was decided that the schools would have to submit their balance sheets of income and expenditure to the directorate for analysis by January 10. The government’s decision on the fee hike would be taken by February 20.

However, Dibyen Mukherjee, the director of school education, had said the decision would be conveyed only by March 1 as all the schools had not sent him the statements of income and expenditure.

“A year has passed since these institutions increased fees, but the government has not taken any substantial action on this regard. The decision was supposed to be made by March 1,” Sandeepan Bhattacharjee, the forum president, said earlier in the day.

Chakraborty told the agitators: “Your messages were duly conveyed to higher authorities in the school education department every time you approached me. I have done whatever I can in my capacity, but they (higher authorities) are the ones to take the decision.”

Parents of children studying at New St John’s School had another concern as March 5 had been fixed for admission to the next classes. “Our children have completed annual exams. When they are promoted, they have to take new admission, for which all dues have to be cleared. How can we pay the hiked fees when the directorate has not given its decision?” asked the father of a student at New St John’s School.

The DI was allowed to leave the office at 10.30pm.