Hefty fees: HPA seeks draft bill to rein in private schools

Hyderabad: With no hopes that a fee regulatory committee will ever come into existence, Hyderabad Parents Association (HPA) has urged the education department to at least draft a bill for controlling fees in private schools.

Members of HPA feel that even next academic year, parents are unlikely to heave a sigh of relief, as there are only a few months left for the assembly election and also once the model code of conduct comes into force, the ruling government will dissolve and the executive won’t have a legal liability to enforce the fee regulation. During the last election in the ruling party Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) manifesto along with other issues, even the formation of a fee regulatory committee was mentioned but it has not been formed yet.

K Venkat Sainath, joint secretary of HSPA, said, “Our hopes have been crushed. We were hoping that in the recently concluded Assembly session the bill would be enacted, but it did not materialise. As the present government will be dissolved very soon, how will the bill be passed? So, at least it will be better if they introduce an ordinance or draft bill on how to control the fee increase in private schools. Not only that, in the name of fees, schools are looting the parents, and this will give them a little hope.”

With the non-passage of the bill in the recently concluded assembly session, it appears that the State government has supported the private schools and also we are disappointedover the non-committal stand of the education department over the grievance not being addressed by the higher authorities, we have been fighting over this for many years but no concrete solution has been given, only the draft bill is our last hope, he added.

“The fee regulation Act is the only solution to stop this issue, also this year we have filed a contempt case against the government for not implementing a fee regulation mechanism despite judicial orders and in reply, the education department stated a draft bill was ready but the State government did not act. Draft bill is the only solution so that in the next academic year we parents will not face the same hardship that we have been facing for the past several years,” said Kishore BVK, member of HSPA.

Meanwhile, recently Telangana Education Minister Sabitha Indra Reddy stated that they was a planned to put up the matter in the recent assembly but it could not be executed.

Once again on Friday State government played foul in High Court during contempt proceedings to safeguard the Interests of Private Unaided schools. The state government during the contempt proceedings has come up with only one regulation that the school shall display the fee details in school web site and education department website and the government failed to come with the decisions took by the group of ministers on March 2022 for regulating fee in private unaided schools that there will be a school level fee committee at school level consisting of representatives from schools and five parents from a particular school.