New fee structure only from next year

Updated on: Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The School Education Department has withdrawn its decision to regulate the fees collected by private schools across the State this academic year.

The new fee structure prescribed by the committee, formed by the School Education Department, for unaided private schools in the State under the Tamil Nadu Schools (Regulation of Collection of Fee) Act 2009, will be implemented next academic year, it was announced here on Tuesday.

Following a meeting at the Secretariat on Tuesday, former Madras High Court judge K. Govindarajan, who heads the committee, issued a statement saying that as many as 6,400 schools had petitioned it seeking a revision in the prescribed fee.

“Since the committee felt that schools, teachers and parents should not be affected in any way, it has decided to inspect the schools again before a possible revision of the prescribed fee structure. This exercise would need more time and therefore the committee has decided to implement the new fee structure in the academic year 2011-12,” the statement said.

After the committee began the exercise of inspecting schools and prescribing appropriate fee that corresponded to the infrastructure and facilities, a section of private schools got back to the committee saying the new fee was too low, that it would be difficult to pay teachers and that the fee was insufficient for maintenance and development.

When some of the schools went to court in April, the Madras High Court upheld the Act, causing more concern among a section of private schools. Some schools then said the decision would also make it difficult for them to implement the Right to Education Act, which makes it mandatory for private schools to reserve 25 per cent of their seats for students from economically weaker sections.

Tuesday's decision has come as good news to several schools. N. Vijayan, general secretary, Federation of Matriculation Schools' Associations in Tamil Nadu, said it was a welcome decision. “When there is an issue, it has to be looked at from all sides,” he said.

With about 20 per cent of the schools having collected fees for the whole year as per the prescribed norms, the Parent Teacher Associations would have to work out ways to adjust the additional or deficient amounts of fee, he added.

New fee structure only from next year

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