Hyderabad: Not just the city, but other metros like Bangalore, Mumbai, and Kolkata also do not have school fee regulations in place, making school education one of the costliest expenses for parents. Metros like Delhi and Chennai, meanwhile, are regulating fees partly. While the Delhi govt regulates the fees of about 400 schools, which took land from the govt, Tamil Nadu regulates fees in private schools offering state syllabi even as CBSE and ICSE schools continue to be unregulated. The maximum fee a school collects in most of these metros is around 20 lakh per annum.
“The situation is worse now in Delhi. Be it a school that is on Delhi Development Authority (DDA) land or others, they have been increasing fees exponentially, say by about 40% to 50%. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, fees increased almost by three times in most of the schools,” said Delhi Parents Association (DPA) president Aprajita Gautam. She said that the situation worsened after a single bench gave a stay on the hikes pertaining to schools on DDA land.
“To begin with, hardly 25% of schools were regulated as they needed prior permission from the govt to hike fees. But after the stay, even they are looting parents,” she added and said that there is no grievance mechanism, which is giving a free hand to managements as officials are least bothered to check the ground reality.
India Wide Parents Association president, Anubha Shrivastava Sahai, seconded Gautam, saying that even in Mumbai and other metros in the country the situation is the same. “As per rules, a school can hike up to 15% once in two years, that too after approval of a committee consisting of parents, teachers, and management. However, they are handling these members and are hiking by 30% to 40%,” she said, adding that while the maximum fee in Mumbai would be around 20 lakh per annum, even a small budget school is charging 1 lakh to 2 lakh annually.
Parents said there is no need to bring in any new fee regulation act as the provision is already available under the Right to Education (RTE) Act. “As per RTE, schools will have to submit their audit report every year seeking prior approval to hike the fee. If they fail to do so, their recognition can be cancelled. Just by implementing RTE, govts can provide relief to parents across the country. But unfortunately, no state govt wants to look into it. All they do is waste time by forming committees which will give no relief,” said Bangalore Parents Association joint secretary Sijo Sebastian, adding that even in Karnataka hikes have been exorbitant.
School managements from various states, meanwhile, maintained that they are not against regulating fee hikes, but there should not be a cap on the maximum fee a school can collect as it would dampen the quality of education.
