BENGALURU: With no fee cap or regulation in place, private schools in Bengaluru are not only hiking annual fees steeply but are now tying up with private financiers to offer EMI schemes to parents.
The move, flagged by parent groups, highlights the growing commercialisation of school education and the state government’s continued inaction despite repeated demands for intervention. Parents lament that by introducing finance-backed EMI options, schools are turning basic education into a debt-driven service. Many argue that this is a way to normalise exorbitant fees rather than address the root problem — the absence of a regulatory framework to keep education affordable.
In Bengaluru, most private schools charge anywhere between Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh just for nursery admissions — and the fees only keep rising as the child moves to primary and high school. This amount, however, doesn’t cover everything. Parents are made to pay up to Rs 30,000 separately for transport, uniforms, books, extracurricular activities, and other add-ons.
Speaking to TNIE, parents said that private schools in the city suggest they tie them up with some finance companies that often charge high interest rates, making it difficult for families to repay the loans.
Offering loans, collecting school fees in EMIs pushing parents into debt
Many parents, desperate to secure admission or continue their child’s education, are lured into signing agreements without fully understanding the terms which pushes them into a cycle of debt.
However, a representative from a private school in Jakkur said the EMI schemes are being introduced as a way to support parents who may find it otherwise difficult to pay the full fee at once.
“We are forced to bear the pressure of high-interest repayments, which often leads to financial stress. In most cases, families we know have even reported harassment by finance company agents when they struggle to make payments,” Shalini Kamath, one of parents whose son is in a well-known private school in Brookefield, said.
Shalini said that a major issue is the lack of transparency in these school-financier arrangements. “Parents are rarely given a clear picture of the loan terms, including interest rates or repayment conditions. Without this clarity, many end up committing to financial agreements they cannot afford,” she added.
BN Yogananda, President of the Karnataka Private School and Colleges Parents’ Association said that offering loans through private finance companies and collecting school fees in the form of EMIs is pushing parents into debt to secure their children’s education. “The education department and the state government must step in and initiate strict legal action against both the schools involved in such arrangements and the finance companies facilitating them,” he said.
This year in April, the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR) pulled up three private CBSE schools in Bengaluru over complaints of charging exorbitant and unjustified fees, including for textbooks. Yet despite repeated red flags, the state still has no proper fee regulation mechanism in place. While schools are technically allowed to hike fees by 10–12% annually based on their facilities, they’re required to display their fee structure and report it to the government — rules that are barely enforced.
Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Madhu Bangarappa told TNIE on Friday that they have not received any official notification about private schools offering such schemes. He said that as a government body, their role is limited to improving facilities in government schools and that they do not have any authority over financial decisions made by private institutions.
On an earlier occasion the minister had said: “If we try to fix fees, school managements will take us to court.” And his advice for the parents unable to afford private school fees was that they should simply shift their children to government schools.
Parents, however, argue that the minister’s response fails to hold profiteering institutions accountable and ignores the growing financial pressure on families. “While the government can take strict action under Section 13 of the RTE Act against such violations, enforcement remains practically nonexistent, allowing schools to break the rules without facing any real consequences,” Mahesh K, a software engineer, who is paying nearly Rs 3 lakh for his daughter’s first standard education, said.