Can schools fix fee based on claim of 'international standards'?

Hyderabad: Can a school fix a higher slab of fee claiming that it was offering education of international standards? Does the State government or any committee appointed by it is authorised to consider such claims of school fee hike based on international standards?

These questions are worrying the parents against the backdrop of Andhra Pradesh High Court recently striking down the State government's GO issued in August last year fixing the fee for schools and junior colleges.

The reason is, under the umbrella of a few parents organisations, the parents have been fighting on the issue of school fee issue with the government and even waging a legal battle in Telangana State High Court since 2016.

Earlier, the Hyderabad School Parents Association (HSPA) and Telangana School Parents Association (TSPA) have demanded the State government to reign in against the private unaided schools alleging that they were fleecing the parents' in the name of school fee which runs into lakhs of rupees.

With the AP government's GO, the parents in TS hoped that Telangana government would also follow the suit and save them from fee burden by fixing the fee for schools and colleges. But now with the striking down of the AP GO, the issue is again back to square one. Speaking to The Hans India, Venkata Sainath of HSPA said, "What is international standard? Who defined it and notified it? What is the basis for qualifying something is of international standard vis-a-vis the education offered by other schools?"

P Kantha Rao, a techie from Madhapur said, "Making children speak and write at school level and study in English medium will not automatically make them acquiring their school education of international standards."

Similarly, S Srivani (name changed), a senior teacher of English in a private unaided elite convent in Secunderabad opined, "Being a missionary school, every student in my school gets education imparted in English medium. Though all get the same kind of education, students differ from one another in different ways."

"Class and age-appropriate infrastructure are more important than big buildings and auditoriums. There were schools which were great in name and fame, but they were among the first to give pink slips to teachers, and to save on salaries, they ran online classes with a downsized teaching staff," pointed out Shabbir Ali, Private School Teachers Federation.