The School Fee Loot: Where laws, GOs and promises to the courts don’t matter at all

Hyderabad: Another academic year is going to end soon. But still there is no indication of implementation of all statutes, orders and promises related to private school fee regulation.

The demand for fee regulation has been on for long the legislature had made some laws, government had issued orders and had also given certain assurances to the high court but here is an unique case where the state government could not implement them since 2014.

In fact the demand for fee regulation dates back to 1994 when the then government in undivided Andhra Pradesh had issued

G.O. MS No: 1 on January 1, 1994 stipulating rules for fee collection. According to that GO the schools were permitted to earn a profit of five percent. It said 50 percent of the fees collected should be paid as salaries to the teachers and that the schools should submit their annual reports and audited statements of accounts every year to the Education department. The same GO was adopted by the Telangana government after the new state was formed.

When it was not implemented even by the Telangana government, parents protested following which the appointment of the Tirupathi Rao Committee, headed by the former Vice-Chancellor of Osmania University (OU) was constituted. The committee submitted its report on private school fee regulation to the government in 2018. But the government for reasons best known to it did not make it public.

It is said that the committee had made certain key recommendations making schools more accountable and accorded controlling powers to government machinery. The recommendations include that no private school should collect donations. If the schools find the need to increase the school fee, they should submit a year's audit report online in government government-prescribed format. "Hike-in fee can be done only with Zonal Fee Regulatory permission etc."

On January 22, 2018 an order was issued by Justice A. V. Sesha Sai in I.A. No.1 of 2018 in WP.No. 1331 of 2018. The order had asked the schools to deposit, any amount above on the memo dated 04.01.2018, in separate bank accounts which shall not be withdrawn pending further orders. As the same shall be subject to the outcome of the Writ Petition.

However, schools at large were reportedly not following the same. Curiously, the majority of the private corporate schools have even failed to implement the state government's GO.46 issued to provide relief to parents from the fee loot even during the COVID pandemic.

According to the Hyderabad School Parents Association (HSPA) which has been fighting against the school feel loot says, "It is difficult to find even a single provision of law related to fee regulation that the government may have been able to successfully implement."

The State High Court in the third week of November 2021 questioned the state government on the absence of a regulatory mechanism on school fees in the state while hearing a case related to the school fees. Hurriedly a cabinet sub-committee was constituted but it also failed to deliver anything tangible.