Fee-hike controversy in Mumbai

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)