February 7, 2013

State to regulate fee in private schools

Hyderabad: The state government has decided to regulate the fee structure in private schools from the coming academic year (2013-14).

According to minister for secondary education K. Parthasarathy, the government is in the process of putting in place a fee regulatory mechanism for private schools along the lines of private professional colleges before the new academic year starts in June.

Speaking to reporters at the Secretariat, Parthasarathy said the government had been receiving several complaints from parents about schools resorting to unjustifiable fee hikes at the start of every academic year.

Failed to regulate fee, mantri admits
Admitting that the government had failed to regulate fees in private schools despite issuing several orders in this regard since 2009, minister for secondary education K. Parthasarathy said officials were studying earlier orders to plug the loopholes and to identify what went wrong in regulating fees in private schools, especially when the government had successfully regulated fees in professional colleges by constituting the Admissions and Fee Regulatory Committee with retired judges for the purpose.

YSR had constituted a committee in 2009 to regulate fees in private schools after parents and students had taken to the streets to protest indiscriminate fee hikes by various schools. The committee had come out with several recommendations to regulate fees and the government had issued orders incorporating these recommendations in the same year.

However, the schools had challenged the orders in the AP High Court and had obtained a stay. The governement got the stay order removed in 2010 but is yet to take any steps about the fee hikes.

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