10% school fee hike in new session, say parents

Parents across the country are very concerned as school fee in recent years has been rising faster than the average earnings of the parents thereby creating a squeeze.

New Delhi, April 6: Around 72 per cent people feel that schools have increased fees beyond 10 per cent in this new session, according to a survey participated in by 9,000 parents and grandparents.

In September 2016, CBSE had mandated disclosure of the fee by schools to CBSE, and on the school's websites.

As per the last notification from CBSE, only 14,000 out of the total 18,000 schools had complied with the order.

In Delhi, 59 per cent respondents said that their school has increased the fee between 11 per cent and 20 per cent, according to the survey conducted by citizen engagement platform LocalCircles.

Around 13 per cent said that the increase was above 20 per cent and only 28 per cent said that the fee increase in their school was below 10 per cent.

In the survey conducted on a national scale, a huge 54 per cent said that their school has increased the fees between 11 per cent to 20 per cent.

About 15 per cent of the parents said that the increase was above 20 per cent. For 31 per cent people, the increase was between 0 to10 per cent.

LocalCircles also conducted this survey in 17 states in India and the results were not surprising.

More than 75 per cent parents from Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Goa said that their children's school has increased the fee by more than 10 per cent.

About 50 per cent to 75 per cent parents from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Delhi said that fee hike has been more than 10 per cent.

Only Gujarat and Bihar were the two states where parents said that majority of the schools have increased the fee by less than 10.

School principals, who participated in the survey, said that in the last few months, they have focused on optimising their costs, negotiated with their vendor base and also looked at reducing wastage of resources.

As a result, they were able to keep the fee increase to the permissible levels, they said.

Parents across the country are very concerned as school fee in recent years has been rising faster than the average earnings of the parents thereby creating a squeeze.

IANS