Haryana parents schools hike fee by 10%

GURUGRAM: A pan-India survey conducted by community-oriented social media platform LocalCircles, involving 32,000 participants, has revealed that 57% parents in Haryana have received notices from their children’s schools about a fee hike to the tune of around 10%, for the current session, which started roughly a week ago.

Ramesh Rana, president of Haryana Parents’ Forum For Education, said, “All schools raise

fees

every session by 10-12%. They don’t ask parents what the hike should be. They raise school fees at will in the name of rising costs.”

In the second poll, 87% parents said their respective

state

governments have not taken any action in years to regulate the yearly hikes, while only 13% said otherwise.

Dev Kumar, president of DPSG Parents’ Association, said, “Had the Haryana government acted against the schools, who are always looking to hike the fee, the disparity wouldn’t have been so much. There are schools in the city which are run by MPs, MLAs and corporates. This is an education mafia and the state government easily accepts whatever they say.”

When parents were asked about the root cause of these hikes, around 61% said it was due to a lack of regulation by the state, while 14% said it was due to a lack of enforcement by district officers. Many of them also cited lack of funds as the possible reason.

Sameer Nasa, whose kid studies in

Blue Bells School

, said, “The state is not willing to regulate school fees because the entire system has become greedy. Schools are increasing the fee citing the Seventh Pay Commission, which is wrong.”

The survey further revealed that 72% parents are of the opinion that fee hike should be based on a model that ties it to the rate of inflation, while 22% said there should be a 10% cap on hikes.

Bhupinder Singh, whose kid study in Narayana e Techno School, Sector 37, said, “There should be a capon school fee hikes by the authorities. Why should the school alone get to decide this? It shouldn’t be raised beyond 3-5% annually.”

On the other hand, schools said the annual hikes are justified. Vaibhav Kapoor, principal of Ajanta Public School, Sector 31, said, “Every year, we have to increase the teacher’s salary. Invariably, we have to do it by increasing the school fee. It’s also based on improvements in infrastructure.”

Deepika Sharma, principal of DPSG, Palam Vihar, said, “The fee hike in our school this year is less than 10%. We do it every year to keep up with maintenance and other costs. There are 15 teacher workshops which are held ’round the year, for which NCERT charges us a lot.”