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Steep school fee hike has parents up in arms

Thousands of parents of school-going children in New Delhi find that they have no other alternative but to cough up exorbitant fees. School management,, they allege, have thrown the Delhi high court order on fee hike to the winds. The authorities, they claim, are unwilling to interfere in the matter.

While parents and the bodies representing them are running from pillar to post to get some sort of reprieve from the steep fee hike, school proprietors and trusts appear to be sitting pretty, taking advantage of the interpretation of the high court order on the one hand and the non-interference of the director of education of the Delhi government on the other. The schools claim that the court order was effective only till the end of the academic session 1998-99.

However, the high court had in its October 30 order last year restrained the schools from hiking the fees beyond 40 per cent for the academic session ending in March 1999. It had also clearly said that any decision on fee hike from the next academic session could be taken by the school management only after proper consultations with parents and teachers bodies and representatives of the director of education.

''In view of the court order, the schools are not at all empowered to hike fee by even a penny without taking the parents and the director of education into confidence. Any step which violates this will be illegal and violative of the court's directives,'' says advocate Ashok Aggarwal, who has been fighting the legal battle for the parents in the high court.

Interestingly, though the high court had passed a detailed judgment on the issue, the parents have been compelled to move the court once again because the statutory committee, as suggested by the court for adjudication of such disputes, has not so far been constituted by the Delhi government.

''We have been rendered remedy-less in the absence of such a forum. Had it been constituted, we could have aired our grievances before it. But today there is no body to listen to us,'' says Mukesh Jain, whose daughter is an eighth standard student in the Mahavir senior model school.

Outside various schools in the city, parents have been holding organised demonstrations to protest the 'illegal fee hike'. Their efforts are supported on a bigger scale by the Delhi Abhibashak Mahasangh, on whose public interest litigation the high court passed the order.

Parents' associations of several schools like the Tagore international school, Ryan international school, Naval public school, Dav public schools, Lancer convent, Gyan Bharati public school, N K Bargodia school, Mahavir public school, and St Thomas have given written representations to the director of education and held discussions with him, but to no avail. Parents claim that the director of education has failed to respond to their grievances.

''It's sheer blackmail by the schools,'' says S K Aggarwal, a member of the Bargodia Public School Parents' Association.

The high court had categorically held in its order that the director of education was fully empowered to handle such disputes and was duty-bound to interfere in case he finds that a school has been hiking their fee irrationally and arbitrarily.

The director of education also has the powers to direct the schools to bring down their fee or withdraw the hike completely.

The court had directed the education department to look into the question of commercialisation of education by a thorough examination of accounts and other records of these schools.

The division bench of the high court had in its order held the Delhi government responsible for abetting commercialisation of education in unaided recognised private schools as it failed to perform various statutory duties, envisaged under the provisions of the Delhi School Education Act, 1973.

Naval Public School Parents Association president K K Bawa says, ''The parents fighting against the illegal action -- hiking of tuition fee -- of the school management have been threatened that in case the revised fee was not paid by the month-end, the names of our wards would be struck off from the rolls.''

He demanded that Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit immediately intervene in the matter to ensure the compliance of the high court order.

UNI

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