HYDERABAD: In a major relief to parents, the High Court on Tuesday sought to know from the government the action it had taken to curb the menace of rampant hikes of school fees in the State. Hearing a PIL filed by Hyderabad Schools Parents’ Association, the High Court instructed the government to compile and list all cases together in the next hearing. All these cases would now be heard together as a batch on 26 March.
The controversy surrounding the creation of District Fee Regulatory Committees, proposed in the Professor Tirupati Rao committee report in 2017, will also be heard by the court. The petitioners are asking for the implementation of GO MS 91 of 2009 which had said that schools cannot collect more than Rs 5,000 as “one-time fee” at the time of admission.
In 2018, the government had issued a memo that restricted any school from hiking the fee. Though welcomed by parents, HC had stayed its implementation on the basis of a writ petition filed by Independent Schools Management Association (ISMA).
In a statement issued by HSPA it said that the government has for long been washing its hands off the issue of school fee hike citing the stay orders granted by the court. “Even if there was positive movement in any one case, the orders issued in other cases were proving to be an impediment. Now that the court has decided to tag all the cases together and hear them together as a batch, we can surely expect progress,” it read.
‘Utilise services of retired school teachers’
In a review meeting with the School Education Department, B Janardhan Reddy, secretary, Education, Government of Telangana has urged it to utilise the services of retired teachers. He said that there were retired teachers who would be willing to extend their informal services to government schools.