http://www.sakshi.com/ | 29th June, 2011
Showing posts with label fee hike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fee hike. Show all posts
June 29, 2011
March 19, 2011
Notices issued to 25 pvt schools indicted by CAG, DoE tells HC
New Delhi, Mar 18 (PTI) The Directorate of Education (DoE) of Delhi government today told the Delhi High Court that notices were issued to 25 unaided private schools here following their indictment by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) for accounting malpractices including faking the loss.
"We (DoE) have already issued notices to 25 erring schools," the counsel, appearing for the schools'' regulator, told a bench of Justices A K Sikri and Sidhharth Mridul said.
The DoE said the show cause notices were issued in pursuance of the CAG''s report relating to financial year of 2006 to 2009.
Meanwhile, Ashok Aggarwal, counsel for the ''Delhi Abhibhavak Mahasangh'', sought an investigation by an agency like CBI into the irregularities pointed out by the CAG in the report.
"The CAG reports reveals not only several accounting malpractices but commission of criminal offences. Some agency like CBI be asked to investigate into it," Aggarwal said.
Advancing the arguments, he said "as the new academic year is about to commence, the schools, which faked the loss, be restrained from raising fee as it is next to impossible to get it (hike) rolled back. Now, it is established that they are earning profits."
November 17, 2010
CAG heat on 25 Delhi schools for fee hike
Parents protesting against the sudden hike in tuition fee across private schools in Delhi on account of the Sixth Pay Commission have been vindicated.
A tell-all audit report of 25 unaided schools submitted recently by the Comptroller Audit General of India (CAG) corroborates the gnawing suspicion among parents that the fee hike was indeed unjustified.
According to the report - that was submitted to the Chief Minister, Chief Secretary, Principal Secretary of Education and the Lieutenant Governor in the first week of November - several sought- after institutions should not have footed the bill of salary arrears to the parents as they had adequate reserve funds to pay the increased remuneration of teachers.
Thirteen out of the 25 institutions audited by CAG were found guilty of burdening parents and these include prestigious names (see box) such as Delhi Public School, R. K. Puram, Amity International School, Saket, Air Force Bal Bharti School, Lodhi Road, Mount Carmel School, Anand Niketan, St. Xavier's School, Raj Niwas Marg, Sadhu Vaswani School, Presentation Convent Sr. Sec School, St.Mary's School, Mayur Vihar and G. D. Goenka School, Vasant Kunj.
There are a total of 1,211 private schools in Delhi. The 25 schools were randomly selected covering six districts of the Capital and have been audited for the period from April 2006 to March 2009. The audit, which has been conducted in the context of a Recent Public Interest Litigation filed with the Delhi High Court on the issue of fee hike, is a first of many to come.
CAG report finds the hike unjustified
The report states: "All these (13) schools had free reserves, which as per directions, should have been utilised first to pay the salary arrears from January 2006 to August 2008.
However, the school management first collected tuition fee from students to the maximum permissible extent and then utilised their free reserves… to meet balance liability. These schools, thus, unauthorisedly collected ` 13.08 crore and placed avoidable burden on parents." Delhi Public School, RK Puram, for instance, collected salary arrears over Rs 2.5 crore even though it had a reserve fund of more than Rs 15 crore at its disposal as of March 2008.
Summer Fields School in Kailash Colony, on the other hand, had its students pay arrears of up to Rs 95 lakh when it had close to Rs 5 crore in its reserve fund.
"I was there at the time of the audit and the observations made by the CAG are completely correct. I, too, had objected to a fee increase when the school had adequate funds to meet the hike in salaries.
"Parents were being footed the bill to meet the needs of the owners. But education today has become a commercial commodity," said a former principal of popular school in South Delhi, who did not wish to be identified.
The Principals of Delhi Public School, R. K. Puram, St.Xavier's School and Amity International School, Saket, could not be reached despite repeated attempts. D. M Sharma, director, GD Goenka, did not wish to comment on the issue as he was out of town.
The CAG, however, has also pinned the responsibility of such gross violation on the Delhi government. "The (education) department did not fulfill its obligation to get the accounts of unaided school duly audited… due to weak governance by the DOE the schools continued to enhance fees despite having surplus funds," the report states.
November 8, 2010
Parents protest fee inaction
Nov. 7: The issue of escalating fees in private schools has become a matter of concern, with these schools fleecing parents with their arbitrary fee hikes every year. In this context, various parents’ associations are up in arms against the state government over the inordinate delay in setting up a ‘Fee Regulatory Authority’ for private schools.
These associations, such as Hyderabad Schools Parents’ Association and DPS Parents Association have now decided to take action by launching agitation programmes from next week, demanding the implementation of AP High Court orders on fee regulation.
On August 27 this year, the High Court had made it clear that the government has the right to regulate fee structures in private schools. But more than two months since the judgement was delivered, little has been done in this regard.
The government, which expressed its inability to regulate fees in private schools citing stay orders from the HC over the fee regulation orders issued in August 2009, has persisted with inaction even after those orders were vacated by the court exactly a year after they were issued. Since the stay orders were in force till August 27, the schools hiked their fees again in June this year at the beginning of the new academic year. Despite the parents lodging several complaints about the unreasonable fee hike, the government remained a mute spectator.
However, government officials said they were still examining a copy of the judgement and that it would take some time before they came out with a suitable action plan.
October 18, 2010
GoAP decides to control Intermediate fee & shy's away from School fee ?
SAKSHI | 17.10.2010 | Page6 | www.sakshi.com
October 2, 2010
Parents from all over the State to participate in protest meeting on October 9
A group of parents protested outside two city schools on Wednesday. Parents of students going to SBOA Matriculation School in Anna Nagar and Gill Adarsh Matriculation School, Royapettah, insisted that the managements reduce the second term fee and the State government intervene in the matter.
This has become a rather common scene in the last few weeks, outside several city schools, with protests intensifying especially after the interim order of the Madras High Court staying the decision of the Private Schools Fee Determination Committee, headed by former judge of the Madras High Court Justice K. Govindarajan. The final hearing of the case has been scheduled on November 29.
E. Krishnakumar, president of the Parent Association of SBOA Matriculation Higher Secondary School, said: “School managements are not only increasing the second term fee, but are also silent on whether they would return the excess fee collected.” Several parents associations have come together to form the Federation of Parent and Student Welfare Associations in Tamil Nadu.
Addressing a press conference in this connection on Wednesday, S. Arumainathan, president of the Federation said: “The government has been silent all through. The implementation of the Govindarajan Committee's recommendations has been very poor right from the beginning,” he said. General Secretary of the Federation L. Shanmugasundaram said parents from all over the State would gather in Chennai on October 9 for a protest meeting in this connection. P.B. Prince Gajendra Babu of the State Platform for Common School System, also a member of newly-formed Federation, said that right from the beginning, there was no clarity on the issue.
“First the Govindarajan Committee prescribed the fees. Some schools sought revision. The committee implied that while the revision might need time till next year, schools would have to collect only the prescribed fee until then. It was all very ambiguous,” he said.
“Now, the government may cite the recent interim order of the Madras High Court as reason for its inaction, but it was not active even before that,” according to N. Karthikeyan, member of the Federation. The School Education Department had earlier said that it would put up the fee structures prescribed by the Committee on its website. “Schools were also expected to put up the fee prescribed for them on the notice board. Neither of these happened,” he added.
P. Solomon, vice-president of the newly-formed Parents' Association of C.S.I. Jessie Moses Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Anna Nagar, says that last year too the management had increased the fee in the second term of the academic year.
“They have done the same thing this year too, but it was the Committee's revised fee structure for the school that made us parents feel that we had a right to raise our voice on what we thought was unjustified hike by the school,” he says.
CBSE schools. Amid all this noise, CBSE schools do not seem to figure anywhere. According to the head of a CBSE school in Kilpauk, though a questionnaire was sent and the school filled it, the institution did not hear from the Govindarajan Committee after that. The entire exercise by the Private Schools Fee Determination Committee has brought in utter confusion among schools and parents, according to Sheela Rajendra, correspondent, Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan Group of Schools.
Schools also feel that the Committee could not possibly have done justice to the fee determination exercise in such a short period. “There were lots of areas where schools wanted to give more details, but there was little scope in the questionnaire. This exercise cannot be completed in two-three months and was not carried out in a detailed fashion,” she adds.
Meanwhile, members of the Students' Federation of India protested on the DPI campus on Wednesday, demanding that the State government go for an appeal in the case.
All India Joint Secretary of SFI G. Selva said: “Parents and students are being fleeced and the government is simply remaining silent, despite protests by parents every day.” The SFI also said that if the School Education Department does not take steps to speed up things, the organisation would protest outside offices of all the Chief Educational Officers soon.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Chennai/article777465.ece
This has become a rather common scene in the last few weeks, outside several city schools, with protests intensifying especially after the interim order of the Madras High Court staying the decision of the Private Schools Fee Determination Committee, headed by former judge of the Madras High Court Justice K. Govindarajan. The final hearing of the case has been scheduled on November 29.
E. Krishnakumar, president of the Parent Association of SBOA Matriculation Higher Secondary School, said: “School managements are not only increasing the second term fee, but are also silent on whether they would return the excess fee collected.” Several parents associations have come together to form the Federation of Parent and Student Welfare Associations in Tamil Nadu.
Addressing a press conference in this connection on Wednesday, S. Arumainathan, president of the Federation said: “The government has been silent all through. The implementation of the Govindarajan Committee's recommendations has been very poor right from the beginning,” he said. General Secretary of the Federation L. Shanmugasundaram said parents from all over the State would gather in Chennai on October 9 for a protest meeting in this connection. P.B. Prince Gajendra Babu of the State Platform for Common School System, also a member of newly-formed Federation, said that right from the beginning, there was no clarity on the issue.
“First the Govindarajan Committee prescribed the fees. Some schools sought revision. The committee implied that while the revision might need time till next year, schools would have to collect only the prescribed fee until then. It was all very ambiguous,” he said.
“Now, the government may cite the recent interim order of the Madras High Court as reason for its inaction, but it was not active even before that,” according to N. Karthikeyan, member of the Federation. The School Education Department had earlier said that it would put up the fee structures prescribed by the Committee on its website. “Schools were also expected to put up the fee prescribed for them on the notice board. Neither of these happened,” he added.
P. Solomon, vice-president of the newly-formed Parents' Association of C.S.I. Jessie Moses Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Anna Nagar, says that last year too the management had increased the fee in the second term of the academic year.
“They have done the same thing this year too, but it was the Committee's revised fee structure for the school that made us parents feel that we had a right to raise our voice on what we thought was unjustified hike by the school,” he says.
CBSE schools. Amid all this noise, CBSE schools do not seem to figure anywhere. According to the head of a CBSE school in Kilpauk, though a questionnaire was sent and the school filled it, the institution did not hear from the Govindarajan Committee after that. The entire exercise by the Private Schools Fee Determination Committee has brought in utter confusion among schools and parents, according to Sheela Rajendra, correspondent, Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan Group of Schools.
Schools also feel that the Committee could not possibly have done justice to the fee determination exercise in such a short period. “There were lots of areas where schools wanted to give more details, but there was little scope in the questionnaire. This exercise cannot be completed in two-three months and was not carried out in a detailed fashion,” she adds.
Meanwhile, members of the Students' Federation of India protested on the DPI campus on Wednesday, demanding that the State government go for an appeal in the case.
All India Joint Secretary of SFI G. Selva said: “Parents and students are being fleeced and the government is simply remaining silent, despite protests by parents every day.” The SFI also said that if the School Education Department does not take steps to speed up things, the organisation would protest outside offices of all the Chief Educational Officers soon.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Chennai/article777465.ece
September 13, 2010
School parents' forum files PIL demanding fee regulation
PUNE: The Forum for Fairness in Education, a non-governmental organisation formed by parents of school-going children has filed a public interest litigation (PIL) on September 2 in the Bombay high court seeking a fee regulatory system in state schools. The forum has demanded an act that could regulate school fees and has also requested all the state MLAs to intervene in the matter.
Jayant Jain, president, Forum for Fairness in Education, said, "We are against the tuition and capitation fees charged by schools. There are a few schools who call themselves international' schools. We want the government to define what really is international' as some schools use the term irrespective of whether they have any international affiliation or not. We have mentioned these two points prominently in our PIL."
According to Jain, some schools charge capitation fees to the tune of Rs 2 lakh, which is exorbitant. "It is even more than the tuition fees. A school in Mumbai charges yearly fee as high as Rs 6.90 lakh, which explains how desperate the need for fee regulation in the state is."
The forum is of the opinion that school managements will exploit parents if there is no restriction on fees charged by them. The forum has also opposed the school managements that collect money from parents under the title building fund' as schools cannot take money from parents for development of school infrastructure.
The forum conducted a meeting of parents and non-governmental organisations in the state regarding the PIL and decided that no parent will pay the hiked amount in fees for the current year.
"We decided that whatever percentage of fees is increased by schools will not be paid by parents across the state. According to the Right to Education Act, the school management cannot expel the students if he or she fails to pay fees. We will make use of this provision and inform every parent to refrain from paying any hike if effected by school," Sandeep Chavan, vice-president of the forum and joint secretary of the D Y Patil Public School parents association said.
The forum has started approaching MLAs and is asking them to take up the matter in the Assembly so that quick steps are taken to introduce an act for fee regulation. The forum has also demanded that a special assembly session be conducted to address the issue.
Government resolutions issued on school fees
MAY 8, 2009: The state school education department issues a government resolution (GR) on May 8, proposing a fee-fixation committee. The GR restrains schools from hiking fees for the new academic year and states that those schools which have already upped their fees will have to seek the approval of a proposed committee
JUNE 2009: A few unaided schools file a petition in court against the GR
JULY 8, 2009: A division bench of the HC allows schools to hike the fees till further orders
MAY 21, 2010: The education department releases two GRs stating that the government will set up a committee to review balancesheets of schools and only then allow fee hikes
JULY 15, 2010: A new GR is released asking schools to follow the fee regulation norms. It is implemented a month later
JULY 20: An association of private unaided schools informs the HC that it wishes to file a fresh petition challenging the July 15 GR
AUGUST 17, 2010: Two days after the Maharashtra government's new school fee policy came into effect, a division bench of the HC asks the state not to take any penal action against school management for hiking fees until further orders
SEPTEMBER 1, 2010: The HC quashes the latest GR on fee regulation
The Court's decision
On September 1, the Bombay high court set aside the government's decision to restrict and regulate fee hikes in private unaided schools. The court set aside two government resolutions (GR), including the one issued on July 15, 2010 that required a committee headed by the divisional deputy director of education to scrutinise the fee structure of private unaided schools. A bench of Justices D K Deshmukh and N D Deshpande held that the "the state did not have the power to issue the GR". The reasoned text of the judgement will be available later, but the judges significantly observed that: "In view of the 2002 TMA Pai judgement of the Supreme Court, the government cannot restrict or regulate fees of private unaided schools."
July 17, 2010
New norms for schools on fee hikes
MUMBAI: After the uproar over the Bansal committee report last year, the state government has come out with a less controversial government resolution (GR) governing school fee hikes and banning capitation fees.
It will now be mandatory for all schools to have a website and display details of their expenditure, revenue and fees. The school budget must be put up on the website as well as on the school notice board.
The GR lays out a formula to determine fees: Tally the number of sections (primary, secondary, higher secondary) and the terms at school and divide this figure by the number of children in school to arrive at an average figure for the school fees per child.
Although schools are allowed to make a reasonable surplus, the amount has not been specified. But before any hike (only once in 3 years), schools must consult the PTA over the matter and the fee-hike proposals must be made six months before the academic year begins.
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