AAP government guidelines to prevent fee hike

The AAP government is coming out with a set of new guidelines to prevent private schools from arbitrarily hiking their fees and plans to terminate land lease of erring private schools that do not follow proper procedure. The guidelines will also spell out serious action which the government would take against those schools that do not provide 25 per cent seats to the students belonging to the economically weaker sections.

The new guidelines will apply to 410-odd private schools that have been provided land on concessional rates by the city administration. The AAP government’s decision to come out with new guidelines follows complaints against about 25 private schools that had arbitrarily effected fees hike without seeking prior approval of the city government. Following these complaints, the AAP government conducted an internal inquiry that revealed as many as 50 schools had already hiked their fees in violation of rules and others were in the process of doing so in the near future.

After issuing notices to some schools to refund the hiked fees to the students, the Kejriwal government also initiated the process of taking over the control of two prestigious private schools. The administration also set up a complaint centre requesting parents to freely make complaints against schools that were violating the rules. The centre is being regularly monitored by deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.

A highly-placed source said that only those schools will be granted permission to increase their fees after their financial health is audited for a period of three successive years by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. Each school is required to keep advance salary of its employees for a period of four months. The audit will also take into account how the school has utilised its funds on movable and immovable assets. The audit will also go into the details whether the school has spent money in violation of the Delhi Education Act. If any school has surplus money and has made investments in violation of the rules, it will not be granted permission to effect any hike in its fees structure.

The AAP government will also send a strong warning to those private schools that have hiked their fees without seeking its prior permission. All such schools will have to refund the revised fees hike to the students within a set time limit. The land lease of the schools that do not follow the guidelines can also be terminated.