Parents bear brunt of hiked fees in private schools, question its validity

For private firm employee K Manikandan, no task at work was stressful enough than paying his son’s private matriculation school fee. It was only in the last minute that Manikandan got to know the school fee had been hiked for this academic year and he had little option but to pay it.

“For Class 9 students, the fee was Rs 40,000 last year. This year, however, (as his son entered Class 9) I was forced to pay Rs 50,000. The school management does not want to explain the hike,” Manikandan said.

Many parents, especially in the city, are burdened by the annual increase in fee by private schools. The increase ranges from Rs 5,000 to more than Rs 20,000 per year in some cases. The school managements, they allege, do not provide any valid reason for the increase in fees.

Some parents believe that the Goods and Services Tax has led to the increase in the fees, but schools say the hike is ‘normal’ as per the standards.

Last year, there was a demand for Rs 1.5 lakh as caution deposit from students of SSM School in Chennai which triggered protests and eventually led to the arrest of its correspondent. This has raised doubts about the fixation of fees in private schools, and whether it is being done as per norms.

As the admissions to this academic year will be ending this month, the Tamil Nadu government, as part of its routine work, will ask all the private schools to submit records of determination of reasonable fees. The schools will submit its “formal data” to the Tamil Nadu Private School Fee Determination Committee, the nodal agency to monitor all the school admission activities in the state.

But, what remains a big question for the parents who seek admissions in the private schools for their children in Tamil Nadu, especially in the major cities, is whether the fees charged by the institution is as per the rule.

The Tamil Nadu Schools (Regulation of Collection of Fee) Act, 2009, prohibits collecting fees in excess of what has been fixed by a Fee Determination Committee, based on the academic and physical infrastructure available in an institution.

A senior member from the Tamil Nadu Fees Regulation Committee said most parents are not aware that the fee structure even though all private schools carry the information in their websites.

Most private school managements claim that the fees are increased every year as per the rule laid by the fees fixation committee. “There is no violation. Every year, school infrastructure has to be developed and that has been informed to the government. Accordingly, authorities fix the fees for us,” said M Vaishali, the correspondent of a private school in Nungambakkam.

According to her, the fee structure is fixed by the Tamil Nadu Private Schools Fee Determination Committee and private institutions would not violate what the government lays down as the rate of increase for the specified period.

B Krishna Kumar, principal of another matriculation school in Aynavaram, said if a school has over 80 teachers, only between 65 per cent and 70 per cent of their salary is taken into consideration by the committee.

According to him, students and parents are keen that their school should have music and sports activities every day. “Though the rule say that the student-teacher ratio should be 30:1, several institutions hire staff for extra-curricular activities,” he said, adding that parents also demand that schools should have lot of facilities.

The Fees Determination Committee has been constituted for the purpose of fixation of fees for private schools. The committee will fix the fees to be levied by private schools after taking into account the location of the school, infrastructure, expenditure on the administration and maintenance, and for the growth and development of the institution.

For LKG, the fees fixed by the committee is between Rs 4,500 and Rs 20,000 depending on the school infrastructure. The fees increase by about five per cent for each class.

The process of fixing fee for nearly 10,200 private schools for three years from the year 2019-22 is under progress. A senior member from the committee said that following complaints, notices were issued to about 600 private schools, which allegedly collected more fees during last academic year.

PB Prince, the general secretary of State Platform for Common School System, said that many schools continue to collect more fees as they need to open many branches. “Private schools should be monitored continuously so that they don’t charge extra fees from the parents,” he said.

He also suggested that the government should instruct all the private schools to display the details of their fee structure in the notice board itself so that parents’ doubts would be cleared.

“In addition, the authorities should issue an order to the private schools that they should create a website where the fee structure should be uploaded,” he said.

He said government should not stop with only slapping penalties on schools that collect excess fee, it should also take over the institution if it is found violating the norms repeatedly. “Most importantly, government should set up complaints cells in all districts. A complaint number should also be provided so that parents could follow up on the matter,” he said.

B Kesavan, member of parent teachers’ association in Tambaram, said that most of the parents were not coming forward to register complain. “They really fear that the school management might target their children, which emboldens the managements,” he said.