The Delhi government on Wednesday allowed private schools in the city to increase tuition fees by a maximum of 20 per cent, or Rs 500, thereby ending weeks of speculation on a possible steep hike.

The Cabinet also made it mandatory for schools to discuss the hike with an advisory panel, including the school management and parent representatives.

The Cabinet decided to create five slabs depending on a school’s current fee structure and allowed hikes of Rs 100, 200, 300, 400 and Rs 500 per month. A school with a monthly fee of less than Rs 500 would now be allowed to increase it by Rs 100. Likewise, schools charging fees up to Rs 1,000 will be allowed a maximum hike of Rs 200, and so forth.

The schools were demanding a bigger increase in fees to meet the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations for an increase in salaries given to teachers and staff. But the Cabinet note says: “All schools must first explore the possibility of utilising existing reserves to meet any shortfall in payment of salaries and allowances.”

A Directorate of Education (DoE) official said, “There are 1,976 recognised unaided schools in Delhi, and we have noticed that salaries are not a major expense for many of them. So it is possible for schools to implement the Pay Commission recommendations without resorting to an exorbitant fee hike.”

The government also put a cap on the maximum permissible amount to be charged as arrears: for instance, a school charging a monthly fee of Rs 500 will be able to collect arrears up to Rs 1,000; schools with fees of Rs 2,000 per month and above can collect maximum arrears of Rs 4,000, it was announced.

The first installment is payable by March 31 and the second by September 30.

No hike till March 2010
A cap has also been put on any other fee increase till March 2010 — the 10 per cent hike allowed to schools at the beginning of each academic year now stands cancelled for 2009.

DoE officials said schools will be asked against increasing non-tuition fee charges, such as transport charges, this year. “We will also recommend that the increase in development charges — 15 per cent of tuition fees — should be scattered through,” a DoE official said.

But the government has authorised the creation of a four-member ‘grievance redress commission’, comprising the education director, two other members and a chartered accountant for schools or parents to take their complaints to. Grievances can be brought to the committee once it is notified, the official said.

The appeal by schools to create a school wage board to look at individual school requirements has been rejected. “A lot of work has gone into the recommendations made by the Bansal Committee and the directorate committee, so there is no need for a salary board at this stage” Education Secretary Rina Ray said.

Schools protest
A delegation from the National Progressive Schools’ Conference, an umbrella body of 150 odd schools from the region, most of which fall in the top ‘E’ category, met Education Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely today. Its chairperson S L Jain said it would be “very difficult” to meet the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations regarding raise in salary for teachers, given “the amount of fee hike allowed”. The organisation had sought 40 to 60 per cent fee hike to meet the increased expenditure.

R C Jain, head of the Delhi State Public Schools Management Association, said: “Eighty per cent schools in Delhi charge less than Rs 1,000 per month. The earlier basic pay for a primary teacher was Rs 4,500; that will now have to be increased to Rs 13,700. How will we pay that much to teachers with only a 20-per cent fee hike?”

He called it “ridiculous” to treat salaries of teachers in private schools at par with government school teachers as the government has “vast sources of income”.

Manju Bharatram, chairperson of Shriram group of schools, which recently hit headlines by asking parents to pay Rs 23,000 as arrears, said the school would now either reduce the number of teachers, or close down. “We do not have cash reserves like some large schools,” she said. “We will have to go to the redressal committee or move court.”