Days after State board private school managements in Karnataka took objection to the State government’s new policy on fee structure, the CBSE and ICSE schools’ associations too have said that they will not comply with the new fee structure for the 2018-19 academic year.
Both the Karnataka State ICSE Schools’ Association and the Managements of Independent CBSE Schools’ Association have maintained that they want further clarity and would meet the new Primary and Secondary Education Minister N. Mahesh to sort out knotty issues.
B. Gayatri Devi, secretary, Karnataka State ICSE Schools’ Association, an umbrella of more than 250 schools in the State, said the notification has come too late in the year. “The fee structure in most of our member schools is done in January or February, and implementing it at this juncture is not feasible,” she said, adding that school managements had filed objections to the fee structure.
M. Srinivasan, president of the Managements of Independent CBSE Schools’ Association, which has over 100 CBSE schools within its ambit, said capping the percentage of increase in fees was acceptable. “However, fixing the fee structure based on the recurring costs and the additional fee that is based on the location is something we don’t agree with. It will lead to a lot of complications and interpretations. We want something simple that will be easy to follow,” he said. Mr. Srinivasan said the association was also working on a self-regulation model so that they can oppose “unreasonable” practices of school managements.
According to the new fee structure, besides recurring costs, the additional fee that can be sought by a school differs from location to location, and ranges from 70% in gram panchayat and town panchayat limits to almost 100% in BBMP areas.
However, parents and parent groups are disheartened with the recent developments. Rajesh S., a parent whose children study in a CBSE affiliated school in Sarjapur Road said, “For years, the State government has been promising that they will cap the fees. Now they have issued a notification as a tokenism to the parent community before the academic year. They are not keen on implementing this and it is merely an eyewash.” He also said that parents’ associations would protest if the new fee structure is not implemented.
