The Madras High Court will on July 17 hear all cases related to the issue of fee collection by colleges and schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the meantime, Justice N. Anand Venkatesh directed the State government to form an opinion after consulting all stakeholders.
A parents’ representative on Friday argued that the salaries of teaching and non-teaching staff of self-financing schools and colleges would work out to less than one-fourth of the fees collected from hundreds of students; therefore, they should be permitted to collect only 25% of the fees.
Advocate M. Purushothaman controverted the claim of private educational institutions that they had borrowed heavily to pay salaries during the lockdown since their institutions had been closed and the government had restrained them from demanding fees. Electricity and other miscellaneous expenses would have gone down considerably during the lockdown since only online classes were being conducted by select schools and colleges. Therefore, the government should let the institutions collect only 25% of the fees if it could not order a 100% waiver, he said.
The advocate said private educational institutions always had reserve funds, and it was not as if they had to pay salaries from the fees. The judge asked him to make a representation to the government.
On April 20, the government directed private schools and colleges not to force students or parents to pay the fees for the academic year 2020-21 and the dues, if any, for 2019-2020. However, in May, a PIL petition was filed accusing many schools and colleges of demanding fees in violation of the G.O. Subsequently, the All India Private Educational Institutions’ Association (AIPEIA), represented by counsel E. Vijay Anand, and others, filed petitions for quashing the G.O. and permitting them to collect fees.
Justice R. Mahadevan, on June 30, directed the government to revisit its order, balancing the interests of institutions dependent on fees to pay salaries and those of middle-class parents who could not afford to pay the fees during the lockdown.
Subsequently, the AIPEIA, the Consortium of Self-Financing Professional, Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu and others submitted individual representations to the government suggesting that private schools and arts and science colleges be permitted to collect fees in three instalments and self-financing engineering colleges in two instalments, semester-wise.
Thereafter, a short counter-affidavit filed by the Higher Education Department stated: “The government has examined the above proposal carefully and has decided to permit self-financing colleges to collect the fees, as fixed by the fee fixation committee, in three equal instalments in August and December 2020 and April 2021.”
However, it was not clear whether the decision would apply to engineering colleges and private schools, too, though the deponent M. Ilango Henry Dass, Joint Secretary, Higher Education Department, said he was filing the counter also on behalf of other respondents, who included the Chief Secretary and the School Education Secretary.
Opposing the government stand, Mr. Purushothaman on Friday told Justice Venkatesh that the government had decided to permit 100% fee collection in instalments without hearing out the parents.
