HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad School Parents’ Association, represented by its joint secretary K Venkat Sainath, has filed a PIL at the Telangana High Court seeking the court to direct the State government to establish a regulatory mechanism in the State for regulating fee structures of private, unaided schools.
The PIL contends that the absence of a regulatory mechanism gives rise to private unaided schools getting arbitrary discretion powers to determine tuition fee and other fee components, in violation of Article 14 and Article 21A of the constitution, and also in violation of provisions of Telangana Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admissions and Prohibition of Capitation Fee) Act, 1983 and Telangana Education Act, 1982. The PIL seeks to direct the respondents — Principal Secretary, School Education Department and the Director of School Education — to come up with the regulatory mechanism, to prevent profiteering and commercialisation in school education.
The petitioner further submitted that the neighbouring State of AP had established the Andhra Pradesh School Education Regulatory and Monitoring Commission for the purpose. Further, the AP government had issued GO Ms. No. 53 dated 24 August, 2021, whereby fee structure for nursery to class X in private unaided schools was fixed for three academic years starting from 2021-2022. Further, liberty is given to private unaided schools to approach the Commission to enhance school fee with valid reasons, in accordance with expenditure incurred by them.
The petitioner prayed to the court to direct the respondents herein to modify the GO Rt. No. 75, dated 28 June, 2021, whereby 40 per cent of tuition fee can be collected by private unaided schools for the academic year 2021-22 as Covid-19 relief, and publish in public domain the report of the Thirupathi Rao Committee constituted by the government in 2017.