Haryana to regulate fee of unaided private schools

Geetanjali Gayatri

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Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 16

Flooded with complaints of arbitrary fee hike by private schools of the state every academic session, the Haryana Schools Education Department has devised a formula to cap the rise and keep it in check.

According to the formula worked out by the Department, the fee hike in these unaided private schools will now be either linked to the expenditure incurred by the institution or the consumer price index.

“In keeping with the demand of the parents, the fee structure has been unified and simplified and the arbitrary fee increase by certain unaided private schools has been totally curbed through this notification issued earlier this month,” ACS (School Education) Mahavir Singh explained, adding that Haryana had taken the lead in implementing key recommendations of the National Education Policy, 2020.

While the hike will have to be in keeping with the per capita increase in salaries of the teachers under one formula, the second formula links it to the Consumer Price Index. Under this, the schools can only charge the CPI plus an additional five percent from the students.

While these schools have been barred from collecting fee on annual basis, they can no longer compel parents to purchase books, workbooks, stationery, shoes, socks, uniform etc only from a particular shop.

Under the new notification, the schools have been barred from changing the uniform before five years, revising fee in the middle of an academic year and collecting any kind of capitation fee.

While they have been asked to set up a transparent and efficient parental grievance redressal framework at the local level, stringent step-up penal mechanism has been put in place for erring unaided private schools.

“This simple and self-regulatory framework shall plug any kind of misinterpretation at ground level thereby putting an end to inspector-raj,” the ACS added.

Earlier this year, the Education Department had received several complaints from parents alleging “unprecedented” fee hike. No fee hike was allowed last year following the intervention of the court amid the pandemic.

“We suffered heavy losses last year and are unable to meet our expenses, forcing us to increase the fee by 15 per cent this year. We still have not recovered from the impact of Covid and the schools are compelled to waive off pending dues since there are parents who still cannot pay. However, the government has no business regulating fee of private schools and we will approach the court for relief,” Anil Kaushik of the Progressive Private Schools Association said.