Close on the heels of the Bombay high court striking down the Maharashtra govern-ment’s percentile formula and ‘best-of-five’ policy which tilted junior college admissions in favour of the state’s SSC (Secondary School Certificate) board affiliated students, comes another reprimand from the judiciary to the state government.
On September 1, a two-judge bench of the Bombay high court constituted by D.K. Deshmukh and N.D. Desh-pande JJ, struck down a government resolution (GR) dated July 15 appointing fees regulation committees to determine the tuition fees of the state’s 8,640 private unaided schools. In Association of International Schools and Principals Foundation vs. State of Maharashtra (WP (L) No.1876 of 2010), the high court ruled that private independent schools have the right to determine their own fee structures in keeping with Article 19(1) (g) of the Constitution which grants all citizens the right to practice any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.
“The right to establish and administer broadly comprises the right to set up a reasonable fee structure. One cannot lose sight of the fact that providing good amenities to students in the form of competent teaching facility and other infrastructure costs money… The decision on the fee to be charged must necessarily be left to the private educational institution that does not seek or is not dependent upon any funds from the government,” observed the court.
The 16-member Association of International Schools and Principals Foundation (estb.2008) and the Private Unaided Schools Forum, whose petitions challenging the GR were clubbed together, are pleased with the court’s verdict. “High-quality teachers, ICT and sports infrastructure cost money and private schools have no source of income except tuition fees. Government intervention in fees regulation will pave way for licence and inspector raj in private schools. Fortunately the court has stopped the government from interfering with the autonomy of private schools,” says Rohan Bhat, managing trustee of the Children’s Academy Group of Schools, Mumbai and a member of the Private Unaided Schools Forum.
However the commonsense judge-ment of the high court hasn’t gone down well with the parents’ community which myopically favours government regulation of tuition fees. Parents grouped under the banners of the Mumbai-based Forum for Fairness in Education (FFE) and the All India Federation of PTAs (AIFP) have filed a petition in the high court pleading for a review of the September 1 verdict, and called upon parents to protest by keeping children out of school on September 27-28. “Annual tuition fees increases should be formulated transparently subject to approval of the state government’s education ministry and/or a fees regulation committee appointed by government,” says Jayant Jain, president of FFE.
The genesis of the September 1 high court verdict can be traced to April 2009, when some parents filed a petition against tuition fees being raised from Rs.1,400 to Rs.2,100 per month by the Bal Bharti Public School in Kharghar, a Mumbai suburb. In June, a 21-member committee led by retired IAS officer Kumud Bansal, was constituted to frame broad principles according to which private unaided schools could determine their tuition fee structures.
In October last year, the Bansal committee submitted its report banning capitation fees, but allowed private unaided school managements auto-nomy to structure their own fees, subject to institutional profit not exceeding 15 percent. But the Bansal committee’s report was severely criticised by FFE and AIFP for being “management friendly”.
Following this, the high court in an order dated February 10 directed the state government to frame a tuition fees policy after consulting experts, acade-mics and parents. The outcome was the GR dated July 15, which was struck down by the court as unconstitutional on September 1.
Ironically, parents who are pushing for state government intervention to hold down tuition fees in unaided schools seem oblivious of the danger of inviting government intervention in the administration of private schools — a sure recipe for dumbing down India’s high-quality unaided schools to government school standards. Quite evidently the parents community in Maharashtra seems unable to grasp this commonsense proposition.
Swati Roy (Mumbai)
Middle class angst
The middle class parents’ community in Maharashtra (pop: 99 million) — India’s most industrial state — is on the warpath against managements of private schools. On September 2, the Mumbai-based Forum for Fairness in Education, a non-governmental organisation formed by parents of school-going children, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Bombay high court inviting a tuition fees regulatory system in private independent schools, and requesting all the state’s 287 MLAs to pass regulatory legislation.
The outcome of this initiative will be of special interest to parents with children enroled in Pune’s Rosary School which has been in the eye of a storm for announcing a fees hike of Rs.7,500 in June. Promoted in 1958 and affiliated with the Maharashtra SSC Board, Rosary School has ten campuses across Pune.
School authorities justify the tuition fees increase by referring to a state government directive to raise the remuneration of all teachers to levels recommended by the Sixth Pay Commission. “The increase in fees is justified because we are following the last GR (government resolution) which requires us to raise the salaries of all the teachers according to the Sixth Pay Commission award. For this we have been allowed to increase tuition fees by 50 percent. Moreover with electricity and water prices having been raised, our school, which does not depend on funds or donations, had no option but to raise tuition fees,” says Ashwin Kamat, senior administrator of the Rosary schools which boast an aggregate enrolment of 8,000 students in Pune.
The parents’ agitation was heightened by a September 1 ruling of the Bombay high court which set aside a GR of July 15 empowering a committee headed by the divisional deputy director of education to investigate the fee structures of private unaided schools. A bench comprising D.K. Deshmukh and N.D. Deshpande held that “the state does not have the power to issue the GR” adding that “in view of the TMA Pai Foundation judgement of the Supreme Court, the government cannot restrict or regulate fees of private unaided schools”.
Unsurprisingly, academic opinion is against the school management. “Most unaided schools have now made education their business. They want to establish branches, buy more land, and so on. In this flourishing trade, owners dream of achieving corporate status. Education provision is just an excuse to accumulate money and power,” says a well-known academic on condition of anonymity.
Stymied by the high court’s September 1 verdict, the Forum for Fairness in Education believes that legislation to override the court’s judgement is necessary. “A school in Mumbai charges an annual tuition fee of Rs.6.90 lakh. This indicates the desperate need for regulation of tuition fees in the state. School managements will exploit parents if there is no restriction on fees charged by them,” says Jayant Jain, the forum’s president. The forum also opposes school managements collecting money from parents under heads such as building fund, lab fees, etc.
However, public opinion is not unanimously against private school managements under pressure to improve learning outcomes in an inflationary environment. Comments Dr. Kaushik Gupta, who is planning to promote a K-12 school in Pune after having worked as a teacher for several years in Dubai: “In all countries, private education is expensive. Those who cannot afford it, always have the option of placing their children in government schools. But the standards of government schools in India are so low that only the absolutely poor are forced to send their wards there. My suggestion is that private schools should hike the fees in small doses after consulting with their parent communities. This way friction and bitterness can be reduced, if not entirely eliminated.”
Huned Contractor (Pune)