Madhya Pradesh Govt Forms State-Level Panel To Regulate Private School Fee Hikes

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The government has set up a state-level committee to deal with the fees hiked from time to time by private schools. The committee will hear the cases, related to fee hike by private schools and the appeals against the orders on it, issued by the departmental committee. The decision of the committee will be final.

The School Education Minister has been made chairman of the committee. It consists of secretary to school education, commissioner of public education, director of state education centre, director of public education, deputy secretary of school education, and joint director of the public education.

The committee will keep a check on the schools whose annual fee is more than Rs 25,000. Because of the committee, the private school management will not be able to hike fees arbitrarily. In the winter session of Vidhan Sabha, the government amended School Education Fees Act. The government has made the gazette notification of the legislation. Out of 34,000 private schools in the state, there are 21,000 institutions whose annual fee is less than 25,000.

So, the fee hike rules are applicable only to 13,000 schools. After hiking the fees, the schools have to take approval from the department committee and the state-level committee. In the legislation, transportation fee has been included. The schools which are providing transportation facility have to update their portals kilometer-wise. The private schools have to upload all the information to their respective portals.