State Student Guardian Forum seeks Fee Regulatory Commission for private schools in Himachal
State Student Guardian Forum demanded the state government to enact law and regulatory commission in the current assembly session to curb the arbitrary loot and monopoly of fee hike, prices of books and uniforms of private schools. Convenor of Forum Vijendra Mehra and co-convenor Vivek Kashyap have demanded the state government to bring a law to form a regulatory commission to stop the arbitrary loot of private schools, huge fees, huge increase in the prices of books and uniforms.
They expressed anger over the increase in the fees of private schools by about 20 percent, 30 percent increase in the prices of school uniform and books in the year 2023. They termed it as the failure of the education department that this year, private schools of Shimla town increased from 50 thousand to 60 thousand rupees directly. Every year 20 to 30 percent more fees are being collected from the students while the students are not getting anything in the name of basic facilities.
They also alleged that about 3 thousand rupees are being collected only for miscellaneous charges, for which no account is maintained. By selling uniform and books from shortlisted shops private school managements are getting commission from middleman, depriving the parents of the discount they could get in books and uniforms worth thousands of rupees for each student. SDF said that this is in violation of NCERT, SCERT, CBSE and MHRD guidelines. They alleged that Private school managements are looting directly from the parents, but the education department and the state government are mut spectator.
They warned the state government that if the positive action was not taken the Student Guardian Forum would open a front against state, education department and private schools. SGF appealed the Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu to take initiative to implement the law to regulate private schools so that seven lakh students and ten lakh parents of the state could get justice. They have said that due to the failure and connivance of various state governments, private schools have been continuously working with absolute monopoly as even during the Corona period, apart from tuition fees, private schools management was busy collecting annual charges, computer fees, smart class room, miscellaneous, cares, sports, maintenance, infrastructure, building fund, transport and all other types of funds.
They alleged that private schools are openly violating the guidelines of the Ministry of Human Resource Development of the year 2014 and the Department of Education dated December 5, 2019, on the matter of fee collection, and are either ignoring the role of the parents’ general meeting to fix the fee and other charges. According to the guidelines of the Education Department, PTAs have not been constituted in 99 percent schools and dummy PTAs are working in these schools. Defying court orders Private schools are still collecting admission fees through the back door channel and annual charges. SDF demanded the state government to immediately enact a law and constitute a regulatory commission to regulate fees, syllabus and admission process in private schools.
