10% hike in school fee for existing students

Tirupathi Rao Committee to submit its report today

A committee constituted by the Telangana government in March last to regulate fee in private schools affiliated to different boards will submit its report on Saturday, with an interim recommendation that the schools be directed not to increase overall fee of existing students by more than 10% in 2018-19.

Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Kadiyam Srihari told The Hindu that the government would permit schools to notify new admissions in 2018-19 on receipt of the report. Several schools, especially premier institutions in Hyderabad, had either not notified admissions so far though it was generally done in October-November or issued application forms but postponed admission process.

The committee, headed by former Vice-Chancellor of Osmania University T. Tirupathi Rao and 13 other members, held several meetings with stakeholders and formed guidelines for fee regulation with the objective of checking profiteering by schools.

Prof. Rao told

The Hindu that the panel considered two options to track profiteering among 11,000 schools in the State. One, it considered introduction of a slab system to determine the schools that should be mandated to furnish fee particulars and those that need not and, two, the percentage of hike that the schools wanted be considered to check records and permit them to go ahead with a ceiling of 10%.

It was decided that the first option of slab system did not stand legal scrutiny because the court had stayed a Government Order of 2010 which said schools charging a fee of ₹12,000 per annum in urban areas need not go to the Admissions and Fee Regulatory Committee.

Prof. Rao said the committee considered the second option and decided to fix a maximum of 10% hike based on consumer price index and annual salary increments of teachers and other staff. The schools that hiked school fee less than 10 per cent could be exempted to produce details to the Zonal Fee Regulation Committees.

The schools wanting a hike in excess of 10% should submit records to ZFRC with fee particulars audited by a chartered accountant for previous two years and the present proposal along with justification.

The ZFRC can examine the proposals and recommend to the government to fix the fee. It was left to the government to suo motu check the records of schools that already had high fee structure but tried to get away from scrutiny, quoting less than 10%.

The idea was to ensure that the schools did not indulge in profiteering and did not use the proceeds from fee for activities other than school development, Prof. Rao said.