State likely to regulate school fees from this yr

Anahita Mukherji I TNN

Mumbai: Is your child’s school charging you a bomb? Do you think the education the school offers isn’t worth the money you put out? Does the school hike fees with little transparency or accountability? If yes, the state government will soon come to your rescue.

State education minister Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil wants to create a body to regulate the fees charged by schools across the state. “While the Shikshan Shulka Samiti regulates fee for higher and technical education institutions, there is no such regulatory body for school education. We are working on setting up such a body in the next couple of months, so that fee regulations can be implemented for the coming academic year,’’ said Vikhe Patil.

Will this body regulate ICSE, CBSE and IB schools too? “Definitely,’’ says Vikhe Patil. “Any school that wants to function in Maharashtra must abide by the laws of the land.’’ Patil says he has received several complaints about profiteering by schools. “We cannot give schools the liberty to exploit the system,’’ he says.

The new fee regulatory committee will check a school’s balance sheets in order to gauge whether the fee charged is justified.

Parents say they support the government’s initiative. “It’s high time such a committee was set up. I also feel there should be a regulatory body to monitor whether the quality of education offered by a school is worth the fees that parents have to cough up,’’ said J Sarita, parent of a student of Ryan International School, Kharghar.

Online Complaints
Parents will soon be able to log on to the education department’s website and key in their complaints about a school. They are free to do this anonymously, said state education minister Vikhe-Patil. In addition, the education department plans to depute dedicated officers at the regional level who can be approached by parents with their grievances.

REGULATORY BODY
School fees: City parents welcome govt initiative
Mumbai: Parents have welcomed the government’s initiative in setting up a body that will regulate school fees.

A parent, whose child studies in an ICSE school in south Mumbai, agrees that there’s a need for some regulation when it comes to fees, but says it should not come at the cost of teachers’ salaries.

“I don’t believe that any system can be left entirely to the free market without government intervention. This includes the economy,’’ said Avnita Bir, principal of R N Podar, a CBSE school in Santa Cruz. Bir agrees there’s need for a regulatory body that audits schools, keeping the quality of education offered by the school in mind.

Several educationists, such as Fr Francis Swamy, principal of Holy Family School (Andheri), say fee regulation in schools will go a long way in encouraging affordable education in the state. “I have found that a large number of schools have absolutely no accountability when it comes to fees,’’ adds Arundhati Chavan, president at the PTA United Forum.

However, Meera Isaacs, principal of Cathedral and John Connon School, Fort, says a debate on the subject is needed before the regulatory body is put into place. While she seconds the view that profiteering in education should be stopped, she believes schools should have the freedom to develop themselves.