Telangana: Parents clamour for clarity on proposed fee regulation law

Hyderabad: Close on the heels of the State government move to bring in a legislation to regulate school fee, parents are asking it to ensure that the new law is free of ambiguity and plugged loopholes.

The parents are asking the government to incorporate proper definitions to remove ambiguity on what constitutes "fee". Because the ambiguity around "fee", "tuition fee", "total fee", "fee hike", and "private School" has left parents high and dry for over the past decade.

Hyderabad Schools Parents' Association (HSPA) joint secretary Venkat Sainath expressed fears in a letter submitted to the State Commissioner and Director of School Education, highlighting several issues and stressing on incorporating them in the proposed legislation.

The new law should define 'fee', the very component sought to be regulated. Earlier attempts to regulate fee without defining what all components are a part of it left parents in the lurch.

The government during the Covid pandemic had issued GO 75 of 2020 directing schools to collect only 'tuition fee". However, lack of any definition of what constitutes tuition fee makes schools include transport and food charges as part of it, without providing the same to their wards.

The best way is to define fee in terms of 'total amount collected' to avoid complications and plug loopholes is to define school fee in terms of the amount paid by parents/students to school, for whatever purpose. Thus, the definition covers tuition fee, activity fee, term fee, extra-curricular fee, transport fee, mess fee. Otherwise, any other way only leads to endless debates and escape routes.

So, was also the opinion of Justice Santosh Duggal, who studied the issue under a mandate of the Delhi High Court in 1998, the HSPA said.

Similarly, there is also a need to define 'private schools" which are sought to be regulated, irrespective of the boards of education that the schools are affiliated with.

That apart, it stressed on 'regulate the fee charged' and not just the 'fee hike'. Because, several schools, specially the older and established ones, have been trying to sell this idea to the government that the regulation of the fee hike percentage (around 10 per annuum) alone, without regulating the base fee, is the best way to regulate school fee.

It recalled that all the judgments of all the high courts and the Supreme Court have, on their part, recommended regulation of fee, and not just fee hikes, to prevent profiteering.

Also, the base year for the calculation of percentage hike to be specified even if the legislation were to fix a certain percentage of fee hike each year, the base over which the fee hike is allowed/calculated has to be clearly specified. They also demanded approval of the fee hike by parents and provisions for parents and students to have a right to complain against any order passed by the Fee Regulatory Authority (FRA), the time-bound disposal of the complaints and grievances raised by either parents or schools.